The Harvard varsity completed another undefeated season and nabbed its third IRA victory in as many years, while the Yale lightweights led wire-to-wire to grab the national championship and end one of the most unusual streaks in our sport.
Undefeated at IRA: Washington 2V bowman Evan Galloway has won the IRA four years running: three times in various fours, and today in the second varsity 8.
A crew from Army won its first IRA gold in school history in the straight four, but it's not Army's first medal; they won a bronze two years ago in the same event.
The men's straight four medal winner were an all-New York State crowd: Army, Colgate, and Cornell.
The men's pair was won by a pair (natch) of lightweights from Cornell; bowman Andrew Diebold is a repeat winner in the event.
One bowman in the pair was wearing a rear view sculling mirror. Dunno if I could do that at the IRA, or if you'd need it on a buoyed course?
During the alumni race, Fred Schoch was announcing the race with all the vigor of any other final on the day. As the crews approached the finish grandstand, he said "Give a big cheer for these alumni crews." A woman in the stands was heard to say: "What? This guy's nuts. These crews started this race yesterday."
Speaking of the alum race, some of the winners of the race were still walking around in their race uniforms 2.5 hours after the race. Someone needed to invoke the over-40 lycra rule…
In the light men's eight, Harvard's unusual and impressive streak of winning the national championship in every odd year since 1991 finally came to an end today as Yale led wire-to-wire to take the gold. Silver medals went to Cornell and the stupendous surprise of the day Penn took the bronze.
Sprints redux: the IRA men's light eight final included the same six crews that raced the Eastern Sprints final.
Penn's bronze medal was huge for the program; Penn coach Mike Irwin was so gassed after biking alongside the race, sprinting around the bottom of the lake, and flying down the dock gangplank, that after he shoved the crew off he had to go take one of the water bottles on the dock reserved for the athletes.
In the light women's eight, Wisco and Princeton came into the day with Wisco holding a 2-1 advantage in their three meetings this year. The field tightened since Sprints, but Princeton was unable to even the score against Wisco, and Wisco won it by about ¾ length, followed by Princeton for silver, Radcliffe for bronze.
After the lightweight men's petite final, I noticed that Rutger's winning time wasn't that far off the heavy grand just 12 minutes earlier. Then the next morning, I received the following note, which confirms a couple things - the wind was coming around a bit tail, but not much, and that the lightweight league has upped the ante a bit the past couple years:
It looked to me as if conditions changed to more tail for the lwt races, and I know the pitfalls of comparing times of crews who are shooting for medals in the grand with those who are in the lower finals....still, there wasn't that much discrepancy betwen the winning times of both events relative to their respective course records...check out final times for varsities of teams that fielded both heavyweights and lightweights at the IRA:
Heavies who went faster than lighties:
Harvard: H 531.7 L 5:45.5
Navy: H 5:42.9 L 5:46.9
The rest:
Yale L 541.9 H 5:50.8
Cor L 5:43.4 H 5:48.4
Penn L 544.7 H 554.2
GU L 545.8 H 557.3
RU L 548.7 H 551.3
Col L 553.1 H 554.2
Harvard took the Ten Eyck points trophy, and Northeastern took the Clayton Chapman trophy for the most improved crew since last year.
There is a future after the IRA: the boat club secretary from Cambridge University in the UK was on site all weekend checking out the prospects. "Are you scouting?" he was asked. "Oh no, we don't scout. We're here more to meet the men who are coming next year, and to see some of the other candidates." Got that?
Much like the recordings of Chip and Seth we did a few years back worked their way almost immediately into the style and vocabulary of many coxswains, Cip's leap into Volp's arms at the Olympics has become the coxswain celebratory move of choice this spring. I must have seen two dozen in the past few weekends.
MV8 race description:
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