Harvard swept the 158th running of their great rivalry with Yale, as the Crimson capped off a season that included a Rowe Cup sweep at Sprints and medals in all four of their crews at the IRA.

It was the first sweep of the ancient proceedings in New London since 2022, when Yale took every race on the heels of winning the IRA's Ten Eyck points trophy. In 2023, Harvard won one race, the 3V, to start breaking through and then re-captured the Varsity 8 race's Sexton Trophy last year for the first time since 2014.

On Saturday evening, as first rain and then dusk fell, Harvard completed the turning of the tide, winning the 3V with their IRA championship crew, then taking the 2V and the 1V with crews that closely contended for gold at the IRA a week ago--all by open water. The Harvard 4V had already won the Friday night race, overturning a loss to Yale at Sprints.

"This year, everybody won and that's a testament to how the team has transformed," said Gabe Obholzer, the Harvard three-man who raced in the winning 1V for a second straight year.

"The 1V winning last year gave the team confidence that we can beat Yale."

The longer distances of the Harvard-Yale Regatta, along with the weight of the rivalry, can be great levelers, but Harvard's top three crews--ahead of Yale all season--finished the job Saturday on the one day that matters the most to the teams that call Red Top and Gales Ferry home in June.

"It's a much different race than the IRA," said Sreetej Digumarthi, Harvard's 1V coxswain. "It has elements of the sprint race where you're side by side next to another crew, but it's over three times the distance. A big part of it is that both crews are going to be gunning for it off the line.

Digumarthi and Harvard stroke Ben Scott off the start

"At the start, you're side by side, like a normal race, but you have to settle into a nice sustainable rhythm you can carry with you for four miles. The end goal is to put the bow ball in front of the other boat, which isn't any different than 2k racing, but it's a very different approach because of the length of race."

In the 1V race, Yale came out strong and held contact with Harvard for the first two miles.

"They were valiant the whole way, in the first varsity, especially," said Harvard coach Charley Butt afterwards.

"Yale has always had a strong start against us," Digumarthi added. "Whether it was Sprints, IRAs, Harvard-Yale last year, they always come out of the blocks really strong, and you have to respect that push.

The Yale 1V

"But we knew that if we just kept it internal, settled into our own rhythm in the middle of the race, we'd have a good chance of beating them through the middle of the race and that played out today."

Digumarthi, a senior, coxed the 2024 2V and the 2023 4V in losses to Yale, so this final race of college was his first Harvard-Yale win.

"You never really know you're going to win until you're clear of the finish line," he said. "It was my last opportunity and I had some disappointing results the last couple years, so it was nice to finally get that one last win and end my Harvard career on a strong note."

'The Work and the Fun'

Obholzer, a fellow senior, saw Harvard lose all four races his first year before helping lead the team's transformation.

"This season, everybody's worked hard. It's not just the 1V, every boat has gotten better. Our 2V and 3V doing pieces, side by side, were really pushing us.

"They had really good speed," he added, "which was helping us get better and then at Eastern Sprints, winning in the 1V, 2V, and 3V, it's just it's been an amazing season, my best at Harvard.

Harvard 1V, with Obholzer in three

"The senior class had some really great leadership, and we spoke to Charley and said, we've got a train a little bit more. We've got to approach it in a different way.

"This is an impressive group of guys," Butt said. "It doesn't happen all the time, where they're so committed and they're willing to work hard.

"It really started last year and it started building on itself. People made the commitment to get healthy and to take care of themselves. What really started last year with the varsity just spread throughout the entire program, and we had good people come in.

"It was about the enthusiasm," he said. "The work and the fun that rowing can be.

"Everybody raced well at the IRAs. It's the first time in a long time that we had two silvers and a gold. So, as coaches we're delighted because it's a great coaching experience, and the athletes are happy with the results and how they're developing and producing."

'Who's Got the Best Class?'

The Harvard turnaround--and their return to both the IRA podium and the top of the Sprints league as a team--comes down in large part to the athletes in the Class of 2026. Now juniors, five of them were in the 1V that beat Yale last year, and six raced in the winning varsity boat this year.

The Harvard 1V

"The junior class has so many talented athletes," said Obholzer, the senior who came on to the team with them after missing his own first year due to injury.

"Next year, they're going to get there," he said, talking about how close the group was to winning the IRA this year. "They're going to keep knocking on the door. I'm excited to see what they're going to do at Harvard and then once they graduate as well."

One of those juniors, Tyler Horler from Sarasota FL, has been part of each step as the tide has turned: he stroked the 3V in 2023 that kept Yale from notching another sweep, with Obholzer in the crew, then moved into the six seat of the varsity for these past two winning seasons.

"My class means everything to me," said Horler. "We didn't know each other before we all committed to Harvard, but we all came here together, and are closer than ever."

After their freshman year, he said, they saw a chance to put a mark on a program that has no shortage of history.

"We saw an opportunity for all of us to really come together. We said to each other, 'This team means so much to us and together as one class, if we just all commit, all 100% buy in, we can take this program as far as it can go.' We just saw it here today, to sweep Harvard-Yale, from three years ago when we got swept, it's a huge turnaround.

Horler after the race

"It's been pretty interesting to see how many of the guys from my year ended up in the top boat, starting with Head of the Charles in 2023.

"We had five sophomores at the time in the 1V, and talking to Pat Lapage, our associate head coach, he said that his year [the 2012 class], they had five. So now it's a rivalry, who's got the best class?

"Then we were able to bump that up to six this year, because Jack Dorney, who was previously class of '25, took a year off trying to make the Irish Olympic team, and he's now officially class of '26.

"We were sophomores in the varsity last year, and now that we're juniors, we're maturing a bit," Horler added. We take on a bit more responsibility on the team and our class has left the program better than we found it, which is all that we set out to do.

"And we're not done yet. It's not about where you start freshman year. It's about where you end senior year. We're all committed to getting better and better every day, getting those 1/100ths of a second that Charley talks about all the time."

Butt agreed that the junior class has been a catalyst, with what he called "important contributions from above" helping to lead the team and increase its depth.

"This year's senior class is very important," Butt said. "Five of those guys in the second boat were American guys and they developed terrifically. Many of them had spent time in the varsity, and you need that depth, where guys who are varsity caliber are racing in the second boat."

Butt with his crew

Butt called it "wonderful" to have his program on the winning side of the rivalry.

"There were three or four years before COVID where we were second in the Sprints to Yale's first, and you can't complain because those Yale boats were outstanding.

"Then, we would be third at the IRAs, a great result, but they'd be first, so I'm just very grateful that we're in a strong position right now," he said. "I've been on both sides of this, and you just have to dig in and regroup."

From the Yale Camp

"Harvard had an incredible season," said Yale's head coach, Mike Gennaro. "The results of our crews were not what we were hoping for, but I'm proud of how our guys handled this season and how far they came from where they started.

"In order to grow the program or keep the program going in the direction that we want it to go, you have to evaluate your crew's performance independently and not by what's happening anywhere else," he said. "That is a part of it, but you have to look at where the crew started and where they finished, and evaluate the progress they made along the way."

Each year, Yale and Harvard get this opportunity to extend the season, to do one more race against their most important foe.

"This year, more than ever, we appreciated the opportunity," Gennaro said, "because the IRA didn't go our way.

"Our crews got better throughout the season. I think about where our varsity was in March when we raced in Sarasota and what they were doing when we got to the Sprints. The IRA result was not what we wanted, but I thought that they had one of the best races of the year in the heat and a very good race in the semifinal. They were rowing better and made a lot of great progress. "Going in to the racing this weekend up in New London, we just kept telling the guys that that was a different beast. The racing there is a different game and Harvard was better than us for 2000m, but these are different races and anything can happen out there.

"Our guys had a great week of preparation for the racing against Harvard. Morale was high, spirits were high. The guys were excited and looking forward to lining up against those Harvard crews. They all gave everything they had. Harvard prevailed, and it was impressive watching what the Harvard crew did, but I'm proud of what our crew did. They did their best to try to make it a race early and hang on for as long as they could and keep throwing sharp down the length of those races.

"The results from this weekend are what make this regatta such a rivalry. We swept in 2022, and that's just three years ago. That's what makes the rivalry what it is and we're hoping to get it back on track and keep progressing. I know Harvard's going to be doing the same and I'm already excited and looking forward to next year.

"I have also been on both sides of this," Gennaro added. "I was very fortunate to be here alongside coach Gladstone, winning these races, and now the tide's turning and Harvard just swept us, but over all the years that I've seen our crews have great performances and disappointing performances, on that day in New London every year the best thing that I see is what happens after the race with those two crews pull together to exchange shirts.

"There's always this moment where you watch the crews reach across, grab oars and pull the boats across to exchange shirts and it's remarkable to see the mutual respect amongst the oarsmen.

"This rivalry is so deep in both programs and beating Harvard or beating Yale is what a lot of these oarsmen came to do when they came to these schools, but it truly is remarkable to see. One of things that fascinated me on Saturday was that when Harvard crossed the line, there wasn't really an immediate celebration. It was just complete exhaustion, those guys were tired.

"They were tired because of what they gave to that race and when they pull the boats across with the Yale oarsmen, all of them are tired. They're all proud that they just competed in the four miler and there's this mutual respect. You just did what we just did and that was really hard to do. So to see the sportsmanship of it and the smiles on everybody's faces, the winners and the losers. It's one of the coolest things in our sport," said Gennaro.

"The true sign of the rivalry is the respect that gets shown towards it after the racing."

Notes From the Course

Bruno Party-Crasher? Harvard boatman Joe Shea spotted a bear swimming in the river just after the race. Seriously:

The bear took his dip just on the other side of the boathouse during the pretty raucous celebrations on the dock, and we have some questions: was it attracted by the noise? Or is just the sort of nocturnal visitor you get when you run the race at 7pm in the dusk? And, most importantly, was it a Bruno bear, a Cal Bear, a local Coast Guard Academy bear, or that most feared of all Ivy mascots, Cornell's Touchdown the Bear? We may never know, but at least this bear was not there to prank-paint the rock like those Berkeley Bears in 2017.

The Man of '56 - In row2k's IRA coverage, we noted that the Yale 1V raced in a shell named 'The Men of 56' in honor of the Melbourne Olympic champions (see that Note from the Course here) and on Saturday, Bill Becklean '58, the coxswain of that crew, was on hand. Becklean was one of several alums from the race committee manning the finish line on the giant yacht one Harvard alum had chartered to give them a good view of the proceedings.

Becklean '58, OLY, third from left

Twins - Not only does Harvard have a set, but twin brothers Luca and Marco Vicino were the first two men across the finish line Saturday--in that order--as the bow pair of the Harvard 3V.

One Last Go, Post-IRA - Coach Gennaro noted how the regatta, in offering the chance to train and race beyond the IRA every year, is a real boon to the Yale and Harvard oarsmen: For most teams, he noted, "the last day of the IRA the last day you get to row in a crew with your boat, then you have the emotions of the results from that day and then the next thing you know everyone just goes their own way. It's a very abrupt departure and end to what was a very long and exciting four years of rowing. For our guys to have the opportunity to spend time up at Gales Ferry with one another is great. There's a lot of reflection done when we're up here and there's a lot of nostalgia for the upperclassman. It's just a really great way for them to cap off their four years. It seems to be a very good way to end their college rowing careers, here in the compound with the people they care about most."

Seriously, Every Year - How does row2k know it's H-Y week and the rowers are cooped up on the banks of the Thames? Well, because we suddenly get lots of bogus results submissions. Of course, with only two schools involved, it is pretty easy to narrow down the culprits even without tracking IP addresses, and the Yale guys probably aren't the ones misspelling the coach's name as "Genaro" (though it could be a feint). This year's winner for outlandishness claimed the winning margin was 4 minutes and 11 seconds, but we did like the description of the conditions: "Choppy for sure, high elbows needed."