“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolute nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats,” says Ratty in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. Cambridge students know that pleasure well, whether pootling in a punt or chasing a coveted Bump-winner’s garland of willow.
For four days each June at Cambridge’s May Bumps, the riverbank becomes a gathering place for students and local spectators, drinks in hand and college loyalties on show. On the water, the mood is less leisurely. Cannon fire sends crews off in pursuit of one another, each trying to bump the boat ahead before being caught from behind. A wonderfully niche corner of our sport, rich in tradition and camaraderie, it’s also a fantastic way to unwind after exams; but rarely does it make waves beyond the cloistered world of college rowing. Last summer was different.
For the first time, the event’s men’s division had become an open category. When American world champion and Boat Race winner Camille VanderMeer took the stroke seat in Peterhouse’s top open eight and helped the college win its first May Bumps headship — finishing at the top of the first division — her choice became a flashpoint: did an elite woman racing alongside men demonstrate women’s sporting capability, or make women’s rowing seem second-class?
Her decision to race alongside the men drew acclaim and criticism: The Times ran with ‘The woman who rowed her way into men’s eights at Cambridge’ while The Wall Street Journal wrote ‘An American Woman Shook Up One of the Oldest of England’s Old Boys Sports’.
Now the Cambridge Blue has answered in a Substack essay, published on 29 October. Its title, "How I Destroyed the Integrity of Women's Sport", borrows an accusation from her critics. Her response explains why she chose the open crew — and why she believes women should be free to make that choice.
VanderMeer, who won the W4- world title in 2025 and W8+ bronze this year, was studying for an MBA at Peterhouse and had won the Boat Race with Cambridge. She was one of four Boat Race rowers in the crew. Starting second, Peterhouse O1 bumped Lady Margaret on the opening day, 17 June, and rowed over for the remaining three days to take the college's first May headship.
According to Peterhouse, VanderMeer was the first woman in an open crew to finish Head of the River. But she is careful about the scale of that claim. “I have been excessively reminded that in the occasion that a college cannot field a full boat for either gender, women may have competed in their college’s top male boat,” she writes in a footnote, also noting women’s participation in the men’s novice division before a women’s division existed, and Caryn Davies’s headship at Oxford in 2015.
Why a women’s world champion chose an open eight
Amid the debate about what her participation meant for women’s sport, VanderMeer offers a rather simpler reason for taking the seat:
"I will note, however, that a big part of the reason that I joined the men's crew was simply because they asked me to."
As a world champion she felt more pressure to meet expectations in women's crews, writes VanderMeer. Enjoying the full Cambridge experience mattered to the American, but so did showing what women can do in the face of attitudes towards female athletes that she found dismissive, particularly in the UK.
The relative starting positions between the open and women’s boats were also a factor in her decision. The bumps order is "hereditary", she explains, and "the men's boat was starting second whereas the women's boat was starting towards the bottom of the field."
"While it is possible for me to compete in amateur sport against male athletes with a lesser degree of experience than myself, I am not ashamed to say that I would fare far worse in competition with elite male athletes. My case was unique because I actually had a better chance of winning on the open side than the women's side."
That advantage wasn’t hers alone. She credits her crewmates: "the seven other members of the crew were well above the standard of many of the other crews competing."
Does racing in an open eight undermine women’s rowing?
"Many critics argued that elite female athletes joining an 'open' category makes women's sport feel second-class. Some even went so far as to say that my actions 'destroyed the integrity of women's sport.' This attitude assigns far too much importance to a singular amateur rowing race, but extrapolated, the departure of the best women from women's sport would indeed be an issue. However, it is an issue we need not worry about."
VanderMeer reasons that sport offers "community, belonging, and identification". Overall, she argues, women will choose the categories where they find more connection with their peers. Where the category is open, they should be free to choose "for any reason that resonates", and "modern feminism would reject the haranguing of women based on how they choose to interact with an inherently gendered world."
She accepts that "men in strength-based sports do have a genetic advantage over women" but rejects "the idea that all men are inherently better at sports than all women". By her account, an opposing college coach asked: "Why would you put a girl in the stroke seat? She will hold the boys back." For VanderMeer, the problem is not acknowledging differences in performance, but exaggerating them into a gulf between men’s and women’s sport. Her answer to a Times reporter — that men’s boats were somewhat faster on average, but the biophysics of propulsion was largely the same — did not appear in the article, she says. The umpire who, in her account, would rather women did not row at all than enter the open category brought the issue back to choice: an eligible woman was still being told she did not belong.
The policy behind it
This year's May Bumps were the first under new eligibility rules. In October 2025, college captains voted 27 to 23, with two abstentions, to align with British Rowing. The vote replaced the Men's Division with an Open Division and restricted the Women's Division to those defined as female at birth. Varsity reported that captains had been warned college racing would likely stop if they voted no, because CUCBC could not afford to defend a legal challenge.
British Rowing's current policy states: "There are no sex-based eligibility requirements for the Open Class." Its Women's Class is open only to "people whose sex is female". At least three women raced in their colleges' top open boats in June, and VanderMeer was the only one in the first division, according to Varsity.
VanderMeer, who describes herself as a cisgender woman, argues the rules have cost others the choice she was free to make.
"One trans woman, who was a member of a women's only college was forced to compete for an entirely different college in a men's boat due to the policy. Forcing women, regardless of their gender assigned at birth, to compete in a primarily men's category can hardly be described as inclusive."
"I was proud to meet a member of the 1956 crew, who as a nonagenarian was excited about the progress made in the event, and I was happy that the members of the college boat club, both men and women, were wholeheartedly supportive. Most importantly, our crew had a lot of fun, and isn't that the point?"
