The discovery that the Thames is currently badly polluted with bacteria was provided by the campaign group River Action which said last week that it had found “alarmingly high levels of dangerous E coli bacteria” along the stretch of the Thames between Putney and Mortlake where the race takes place.

Thanks to the vast amounts of sewage now being dumped in the Thames, prevalence of the bug was 10 times higher than what is considered to be safe. As a result, crews from both boats were warned not to take a dive into the Thames at the end of the race lest they suffer diarrhoea, kidney failure or sepsis.

And the culprit? Thames Water, which has been found to have been releasing effluent directly into the river and its tributaries on a grand scale. One recent study indicated that the utility firm had pumped at least 72 billion litres of filth into the river since 2020, enough to fill 29,000 Olympic swimming pools.

For its part, Thames Water, which is facing an uncertain future after shareholders refused to inject fresh equity into the ailing business, has blamed high rainfall for flushing effluent out of its drains and into waterways. The fact that Thames Water has also said it needs to increase bills by 56% to deal with its debts and improve its creaking infrastructure has not helped its image.

Last week, the company’s leadership was denounced as a disgrace by the communities secretary, Michael Gove, and accused of taking excess profits while failing to invest in badly needed infrastructure. Now the renationalisation of Thames Water has become a real prospect. The water industry was privatised by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, and if Thames Water is renationalised this would confirm in many people’s minds that the whole exercise had been a very costly fiasco.

The fury that has erupted over the river and its pollution has had one other unexpected result. The Boat Race, an event normally considered by the rest of the world to be a mildly amusing, slightly eccentric piece of British entertainment, found itself being held up as a perfect example of the wounds that Britain now regularly inflicts on itself.

For the first time, Fox News, CNN and other international outlets ran stories about the race’s buildup. As Thursday’s New York Times put it: “The warning is stern: Do not enter the water. Not because of the tide. Not because of sharks. Because of the sewage.” For its part, CBS talked about London’s “sewage-infused” Thames.