The Boat Race and University Challenge are both being dominated by postgraduates yet used to be about the nation admiring the strength and knowledge of young people
No one watching University Challenge lately will have overlooked the presence of Jason Golfinos. He’s the man who knows everything. He knows about Praxiteles and Benny Goodman, about Winston Churchill’s speeches and video games. He’s American and he tends to celebrate a moment of knowledge-based triumph with a fist-bump.
He graduated from Princeton two years ago and now he’s doing his master’s in Asian and Middle Eastern studies at Darwin College, Cambridge, a post-graduate college where they don’t teach anyone you would immediately identify on the street as a university student. His three teammates, all British, won’t be seeing 30 again. Or 40, in a couple of cases. They seem to be on the show because there are four seats available for each team and the BBC producer insists they all need to be filled. They can only gape in gratitude while Golfinos gobbles up starter questions as though they were long hops (he’s a New Yorker, but he probably knows what a long hop is, too).
Written by Richard Williams
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2019/apr/08/james-cracknell-story-boat-race-postgraduate under the title “James Cracknell is a great Boat Race story but should age eclipse youth? | Richard Williams”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
