Boat Race 2018: London boy Charlie Fisher striving to graduate as Cambridge’s lucky charm

For Charlie Fisher, life has come full circle. On the eve of his second Boat Race for Cambridge, the crew’s boat will be stored in the boathouse of the London school he attended, KCS Wimbledon, and where he first dipped his oar in water.

Useless, in his own assessment, at the traditional sports at school but already 6ft 1in at the age of 13, Fisher took to rowing, almost immediately aware of the ramifications of the Boat Race.

“We’d row from Putney and you’d see the Boat Race crews coming flying past,” he recalls. “That was pretty inspirational.”

Fisher has previous in the Boat Race, having rowed in the winning boat in 2016, but was overlooked last year when Cambridge were beaten by just over a length.

For the 23-year-old there is a possibility that tomorrow’s race could be his last, as he finishes his history Masters this summer and has a place at the law firm Freshfields waiting.

“I’m at a crossroads about whether I go on in rowing or focus solely on working life,” he says.

For now, the Boat Race is his priority, followed by a thesis on Wahhabism in India in the late 19th century, which comes after his previous dissertation about the Hashemites and the Saudi Royal Family.

Tomorrow’s 17 minutes of intense racing are, though, all that currently occupies his mind, the sense of not letting down his team-mates and the quest to get the Cambridge boat across the finish first.

Having been overlooked for selection last time around, he is more driven than ever. “I made some technical changes and changes regarding my time off the boat and a proper off-season,” he explains. “Missing out was frustrating but motivating at the same time.”

It remains to be seen whether Fisher can be a lucky charm for Cambridge, the men’s duel preceded an hour earlier by the women’s race.

There are parallels between Fisher and Oxford’s Juliette Perry, who was born in London and similarly struggled to make progress in any sporting field in her school days.

Perry, approaching her finals, came even later to the sport in her first year at university, but is in the Boat Race two years on. “I never expected to end up in the blue boat when I started,” she says. “I never thought I’d find sport or anything in fact I love as much as rowing.

“What I’d say to anyone out there is try out every sport as the right one’s out there for you. For me, that’s rowing, that feeling of going along and feeling so powerful over the water, the buzz and the adrenaline,” Perry adds.