Trenton Oldfield, 36, was sentenced on Friday to six months imprisonment for the crime of causing a public nuisance. He was also ordered to pay £750 costs. Mr Oldfield caused controversy in April by swimming in front of the Oxford boat to disrupt the annual Boat Race, necessitating a restart.

Passing sentence a month after Oldfield was found guilty at Isleworth Crown Court, Judge Anne Molyneux relied on the disproportionate nature of his act, and the danger in which he put himself and others, to justify the sentence. In particular the judge condemned the protest as unnecessary and unsuccessful. She said, “There were many other ways in which you could have promoted your views more effectively. It was not clear to anyone who saw what you did what your views actually were”.

Others have disagreed with the judge’s assessment. In a statement released on the day of his sentencing, Oldfield’s wife Deepa Naik said, “Trenton’s protest was a reaction to an increasingly brutal business, media and political elite”. The two have worked together since 2007 in a not-for-profit organization called ‘This is not a Gateway’, whose website claims it “creates platforms for critical projects and ideas related to cities”. Mr Oldfield’s former website earned him ridicule earlier in the year for urging cleaners not to change the toilet paper for “someone that considers themselves elite or is an elite sympathiser”. It is not clear whether his protest was related to the organisation’s work.

Giving his reasons for the offence, Oldfield maintained that the act was “a symbol of a lot of issues in Britain around class. Seventy per cent of government pushing through very significant cuts are Oxford or Cambridge graduates.” In the judge’s opinion, however, the protest was misguided in singling out the Boat Race.

She categorised his targeting of the athletes involved as a prejudice, and told him: “You made your decision to sabotage the race based on the membership or perceived membership of its participants of a group to which you took exception. That is prejudice. It is a necessary part of a liberal and tolerant society that no one should be targeted because of a characteristic with which another takes issue,” she added. “Prejudice in any form is wrong.You did nothing to address inequality by giving yourself the right to spoil the enjoyment of others.”

Sir Matthew Pinsent, the Assistant Umpire in the race, joked on Twitter: “6mnths for the Boat Race swimmer. Gets to take his message to a captive audience now.” He continued by stating that “I stand by my court statement”, which helped to secure Oldfield’s conviction. During the trial, Pinsent explained the danger posed by the stunt, claiming that he could have been killed by the metal rigging or an oar. Footage of the race was also shown to the court during the trial.

Ms Naik suggests in a statement online that government ministers interfered with the prosecution case and asked for a more serious charge “so that a custodial sentence could be achieved.” Graham Virgo, Professor of English Private Law at the University of Cambridge, however, said that Public Nuisance was “an appropriate offence with which to charge him”.

The sentencing guidelines allow judges a considerable degree of discretion, and clearly the judge felt that a number of factors made this case cross the custody threshold. Public Nuisance is a very broad crime which applies to many types of behaviour and therefore it is difficult to compare the seriousness of his actions with other cases that have gone before; certainly, nobody has swum across the Thames in front of the Boat Race before.

Representatives of CUBC declined to comment on the sentence, but in his official statement former CUBC President David Nelson condemned the actions of the protester, and former OUBC President Karl Hudspith commented that “we were robbed of a true Boat Race.”

Stuart McPhail, Men’s Captain of Downing College Boat Club, who attended the race, told Varsity: “He definitely should have been convicted. It was vital to stop it happening again, and the sentence was proportionate to the huge level of disruption caused.”

Mr Oldfield claimed that he felt the need to protest after hearing about the proposed spending cuts, which he said were “worse than in Dickens’ time”.