ROWING journalist Mike Rosewell is hanging up his pen for city readers after almost four decades.

The 77-year-old has contributed to the Oxford Mail and its sister paper The Oxford Times for the last 38 years.

He is a veteran of the Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge and was also its official timekeeper for 12 of those contests.

Life on the county’s rivers is part of his family history.

Mr Rosewell – who covered five Olympic Games – said: “My family have been watermen on the River Thames since 1671, originally at Marlow and since 1862 at Walton-on-Thames.

“I was close to the action in my early years, seeing my grandfather and father called up at night during flooding to rescue people in bungalows above Walton Bridge.

“I think I was seven or eight when I first saw a body being pulled out of the river. If anyone drowned in the river I would be in my grandfather’s boat. It was part of the waterman’s job.”

He began working as a rowing writer on the Surrey Herald in 1963, also contributing to the Rowing Magazine and London’s Evening Mail.

Mr Rosewell arrived at Oxford in 1976 to take up a post at the North Oxford independent St Edward’s School, becoming head of economics. And as rowing coach Mr Rosewell quickly established himself on the Oxfordshire schools sports scene.

He will be succeeded as The Oxford Times’s rowing correspondent by John Wiggins, also a former head of rowing at St Edward’s.

In 1976 Mr Wiggins was the youngest winner in a Boat Race at 18 years, eight months, as well as having been the youngest winner at Henley Royal Regatta.

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