A former Princeton University lightweight, Oxford women’s President Annie Anezakis – her surname is Greek, although Annie comes from Melbourne, Australia – arrived in Oxford in the summer of 2021 to study a Masters in Pharmacology, after an undergraduate experience at Princeton heavily disrupted by Covid.
She arrived to an Oxford squad studded with international athletes, including Canada’s Gabby Smith and America’s Christine Cavallo and Erin Reelick.
“I was really intimidated to begin with, coming from a lightweight college programme in the States. A successful lightweight programme, but still – I never really saw myself making the Blue Boat. That whole season was so exciting for me – I was rowing alongside, and against, women I’d always looked up to in the sport. As well as the stars in my own crew, my opposite number for Cambridge was New Zealand Olympic champion Grace Prendergast, and she was someone I’d always looked up to in the sport. That whole Boat Race was one of those pinch-me moments, we ended up losing but we were the fastest Oxford women’s Blue Boat to date on time.
“It was such a surreal year, but what was cool was realising I’d earned my seat in that boat. I deserved to be there, and it wasn’t luck. Up until that point, it was my greatest rowing achievement. To be racing alongside people of such a high calibre was really special.”
Annie returned to the OUBC squad in 2023 now enrolled in Graduate Entry Medicine, and was selected as stroke for the 2024 Boat Race. Cambridge took the victory, but Oxford’s mid-season coaching changes had only recently started to bed down. One of the challenges in developing a successful Boat Race programme is being able to appreciate long-term progress, aside from whether the Blue Boat records a win or a loss.
“I decided to run for President. We built a really solid foundation last season and I felt excited to keep building on that. It’s a big commitment alongside studying medicine, it’s a very time intensive course. But I wanted to take on responsibility for continuing to build the culture and foundations we put in place last season. There was a lot of positive change: Allan French – who only took over in January 2024 – did an amazing job of guiding the team in a new direction, and I’m working alongside him to keep pushing the team on.”
How do the student leaders of the club work with the coaches to embed change?
“After the Boat Race we identified areas for improvement, and I wanted to take on responsibility for that change continuing to happen going into the next Boat Race campaign.
“We want to make sure we’re making the most out of the club merger, and being clear about our athlete approach to training and how we balance our studies. We want to develop our team culture off the water, and also have a really unified approach to how we race. Fundamentally, we’re aiming to have a rock solid idea of: this is how the Oxford women race on race day. This is our racing mentality.”