IN MY everyday circles, racing punters are those who gamble inveterately on horses and a punt, if not a bet, is a distant memory of a boat in which you once set out to seduce a girl on the river at Oxford and ended up turning humiliating circles. Decidedly not a vessel in which to race.

So it was a considerable surprise to find that punt racing is among the most traditional of sports, that there were professional punters until the 1950s and that the sport today, while shunted firmly into a siding marked neglect, has a small but diverting group of participants.

The season reached its climax on Sunday, with the 121st Thames Punting Club Regatta. Thames is to punting what MCC is to cricket — it makes the rules, appoints the umpires and generally oversees clubs. Its annual regatta is the undisputed championship event.

Held on a stretch of the river by Maidenhead Bridge, adorned with weeping willows and half-timbered houses worth several million pounds, its punters ranged in age from 11 to 73. Back in the 1880s, Maidenhead was the centre of the boat craze, in which the rich and fashionable descended on the Thames in vast numbers. Taplow Court was the home of Lord Desborough, who became the first great amateur punting champion and did more than anyone to popularise the sport.

Jerome K. Jerome described Maidenhead as “the haunt of the river swell and his overdressed female companion”. Had he returned on Sunday, he might have thought his words still held true, as expensive motor launches and their glamorous owners glided past in endless convoy.

Near the Berkshire bank, however, the slow lane was occupied by this arcane sport, in which the punters still wear hooped Edwardian grandad shirts and change in a red-and-white striped tent that might be from a Punch and Judy season.

Those gathered were largely competitors and their families, a far cry from the postwar days recalled by Barbara Miroy, the club secretary. “The bank was packed solid and we always featured in Tatler,” she said. She is not alone in fearing for the sport’s future. “It’s in danger of dying unless we get more young people,” she said.

A punting course, according to my manual, should be “straight, shallow and have a firm bottom”, which sounds like a dumb-blonde joke. Yet the strength, balance and skill necessary to guide a punt at speed for 400 metres, pivoting on the halfway pole and returning, is formidable. The punts used in championship events are fibre-glass designs, some only 12 inches wide and precarious enough to dump several competitors in the river as they strained for the finish line.

Sandy Nairne was one who ended in the drink but emerged unabashed. Nairne punts as a release from his duties as a director of the National Portrait Gallery — eight years ago, he punted all the way from London to Oxford in six days. Just the sort of challenge likely to interest the remarkable Graham Summer, who will be 74 this month yet still races despite heart bypass surgery. “I had the heart attack eight years ago,” he said. “These days, when I’m exhausted at the finish, I don’t lie down in the boat because it alarms my wife.”

Mike Hart, who won a double sculls silver with Chris Baillieu in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, was favourite for the Amateur Championship. It went instead to Richard Carless, whose day job involves hiring out his stock of 60 boats — including a submarine — to film companies, then directing their usage.

Carless is only just back from hectic filming of Casino Royale in the Bahamas and Venice and perhaps his greatest service to his sport would be to persuade the Bond producers to write a punting scene into the next movie. It may take that kind of populist exposure to save this pursuit from extinction.

NEED TO KNOW

The sport? Punt racing dates back to the 1880s and is confined to a stretch of the Thames from Teddington to Wargrave, in Berkshire

Who plays? Men, women and children from diverse backgrounds — but only six punting clubs exist.

Who watches? The social set has long moved on — these days, mainly family and friends

Big event? The Thames Punting Championships, first Sunday of every August

Weblink? www.punting.org.uk

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