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“bring it on! come on! You came to win!”
The orders screamed at the top of his lungs, coming naturally from the mouths of Anthony Kenny and his colleagues at Oxford University’s Said Business School.
At the MBA competition, known as the popular MBAT, Kenny completed the first of 500 meters of rowing challenges on an indoor rowing machine. Now playing coxswain for an MBA candidate at Said, he successfully completed the 2,000 meters ahead of everyone else for the three teammates following him.
As a rowing race. As powerful as the annual boat race on the Thames
With the race taking place in front of the large gym at the HEC Paris campus, the Thames Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race had the intensity of one of sport’s greatest rivalries.
The cheers and applause of his teammates filled the small room and spilled into the hallway. So was Kenny’s rallying cry, having served in both the Australian and British armies for years, the latter serving as an army chief.
With Cambridge Judge Business School’s team in first place, Oxford were the last to row today, and they didn’t disappoint. Standing behind a series of free weights, the players watched silently as Kenny completed the run in one minute and 24 seconds, each new Oxford player on the machine, the Cambridge players swinging their first-place lead.
Oxford VS. Cambridge: The ultimate rowing machine bragging rights
At the end, Oxford rowed first with a time of 5:53 minutes, followed by Cambridge at 6:01. If it’s any consolation, the second Cambridge team finished the race in 6:41 to win third place.
This time, the bragging rights belonged to Oxford, whose team is gunning for its fifth straight win at the 32nd MBA Olympics at HEC Paris. This year’s event saw 1,337 competitors and their partners in the hunt, with the largest group at HEC Paris with 264 players (see table on the left). Last year, Oxford’s 220 competitors from more than 70 countries topped the medal table with 15 gold, 11 silver and 5 bronze. HEC and London Business School were ranked second and third respectively.
The winner of each competition, either individually or as a team, gets 20 points. Second place is awarded 15 points; Third place, 10 points. If a school doesn’t finish in the top three but still plays, it gets 2 points. So the more competitions a school enters, the more likely it is to win the big trophy.
Oxford have a good shot at making it five in a row. Although the last day of the competition is tomorrow, the leading teams from among the 16 business schools here are keeping their state at the top of the rankings.
At the end of the day, Oxford finished top of the table with 376 points to HEC’s 345, with Cambridge in third with 249 points. London Business School (239 points) and Isade (190) rounded out the top five. Only two other schools gained more than 100 points. They are IE Business School in Madrid (162) and Rotterdam School of Management (146).
Few business schools come to the MBAAT as well prepared as the Oxford team. For example, the women’s soccer team from Oxford trained twice a week for six months before arriving in Paris. He lost in the finals to the London Business School. An Oxford MBA said his team had been videotaping the players in preparation for a mud pit battle. “They actually market the MBAT as part of the course,” says James Naisbitt, who will graduate with an MBA from Syed this July.
The men’s European football final, the finals of badminton and beach volleyball, along with the finals of dodgeball, cross-training and cricket, including three players, two from Oxford, are still to come. And one person from Cambridge was injured, two needed surgery. This year’s MBA tournament president Victor Heulm, who will graduate with an MBA from HEC in June next year, said: “It’s going to be a lot of fire, but it’s going really well.”
Competitions include Mario Super SMASH Brothers
While some of the 34 races here are just for fun and entertainment, even Mario Super Smash Bros. or League of Legends, rowing is serious business, especially with Oxford and Cambridge. Members of both teams rowed regularly and many of them raced on the River Thames.
“It takes power and strength to win,” says former consultant Clay Wilcox of LEK Consulting in San Francisco, who will receive his MBA from the Seid School of Business in September. As well as being in the A team, he is a serious rower, captaining the Exeter College club rowing team. “If you have arms and legs, it has a lot of power and helps. With this happy 140 people return to Exeter.
Each member of the Oxford rowing team is working towards their MBA. Khalid Mather has worked for Halliburton for over eight years as a technical specialist. He represented the New College rowing team at the regatta and won three races against three colleges. Andrew Wakefield, who left a finance job with semiconductor maker Hyvview Power, has volunteered on the London Rowing Club’s finance committee.
Oxford won the evening’s dance competition, where each school could place a maximum of 16 dancers on stage in between 2.5 minutes and four minutes.
The dance competition was so loud that the locals called the police.
As smoke machines spewed out thick fog and multi-colored spotlights, the Oxford troupe mixed a variety of dance styles, from hip-hop to samba, to a deafening roar.
Indeed, residents of a local village in Jui-in-Josa called the police to complain about the noise on the normally quiet, country-like campus. When French police arrived at the campus, 15 miles southwest of Paris, some students mistook the Chippendales for a man-bashing on stage.
There is no such chance. Friday night’s MBA Battle of the Bands takes place in one of the many buildings on campus, and it took three weeks to set up the giant Big Top tent.
Don’t miss: at HEC Paris, the MBA Games kick off or the MBA Olympics: organizing the largest international gathering of MBAs
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