Robinson alumnus, Theo Hatcher (Natural Sciences, 2021) had his first taste of rowing at nearby St John's College School, made major progress with Robinson College Boat Club and was selected to row for the Lightweight Blue Boat at Seven Seat in The Boat Race 2025.  A year on, he shared his journey to The Boat Race with us, an incredible achievement made all the more impressive by a medical condition which threatened to hold back his dream.

“Before university, I had rowed on and off at school and sixth form. After a particularly hard training session in sixth form, I had a very strange reaction: my whole body turned red, and I developed a bubbly rash. After a few days and some trips to A&E, I was eventually unable to walk, stand up or lift a fork to eat. After 10 days in intensive care, doctors discovered I had a predisposition for rhabdomyolysis, a condition that killed off a lot of my muscle mass. I also learned I had a metabolic disorder and Coeliac disease. I was told I may not be able to compete in sport ever again and that I would have to be very careful doing exercise.

Despite this I started to rehab slowly to try to get back to the sports I loved. It took over a year to recover the muscle mass I had lost. To restart I had to build up a tolerance to exercise, to train my body to deal with the excess muscle damage and recover quickly. I had only just recovered when I started at Robinson, where I joined RCBC (Robinson College Boat Club) and spent my first-year learning sweep rowing (one oar). Each year I did more rowing, got more involved with the committee and better managed my studies alongside the commitment. By third year I had progressed significantly, and three years of training had built my tolerance to 6 sessions a week.

That improvement got me within the heavyweight cut off times for the University’s development squad. I was conflicted about trialling for CUBC (Cambridge University Boat Club) because I was unsure about managing a master’s degree alongside the intense trialling schedule, including 12 sessions a week. I had already signed up for an Ironman which was only 2 weeks before training started, and I didn’t know if my health would cope with trialling. I eventually committed to trialling for the Lightweight team, my main motivation being that it would be to prove that it was possible to compete again despite my previous ITU admission, and to see how far I could push myself. 

One day in preseason, I woke up at 4am unable to properly use the fingers on my right hand as they had locked open and wouldn’t bend. This eased after a few hours but would become more frequent until this was a daily occurrence, likely a response to the training volume. I eventually dealt with this by using hot water and massaging my hands. The other challenge, as with any lightweight sport, was weight management. This was made harder by my metabolic disorder and Coeliac disease but our coach, Nick, and CUBC as a whole were very supportive. Similarly, when it came to weights and conditioning training the coaches were again happy to let me find what worked. This was also the part of training most likely to trigger a rhabdomyolysis episode, so that flexibility was vital. I think that without this freedom, I would not have been able to make it through the trialling process, and I would not have made the final crew, and this is a testament to the training staff at CUBC. My favourite part of trialling was the squad dynamic and the people I am surrounded by. I saw the guys, usually multiple times, every day and could always count on them for support, a good laugh or advice.

Without Robinson College Boat Club, I wouldn't have had the confidence to trial for the University. The Club and College gave me a lot of memorable moments and loads of support. 
I felt very little impact on my work, morning training finished at 8:30am leaving me with full, productive workdays. I really enjoyed this regimented schedule, and it greatly improved my work. This resulted in my best set of results out of all 4 years. The sacrifices made for trialling were large, balancing 8 months of training, health, social life, weight and work was not easy. However, I loved every second of the process and I’d do it all again.

I will never forget winning my Boat Race!

Since graduating, Theo has started a PhD at St Andrews. “Sports wise it's been very up and down, I did an 85km ultra marathon not long after starting the PhD but the myopathy has made running quite hard. So, I’m now I'm sticking to cycling until I'm able to run again”.