A curious feature of Henley: as the Boat Tents get emptier, the crowds “clapping out” the remaining crews get larger—and that was on full display today as the Regatta got down to its final chapter: Finals Day.
Ahead of our full report, interviews, and galleries from everything from the morning through Prize Giving, here is a quick dispatch on the results, with links to watch the races you may have missed:
12 US Finalists, to 5 Red Boxes
In all 11 of the 26 Finals featured American crews and, with Brown and Yale meeting in the Island Challenge Final, that put 12 US crews within one race of a Henley Prize today.
After perhaps the best conditions—and weather—of the week, 5 crews had won the final two boat showdown dictated by the Draw.
If you can watch just one, you might try reliving what Washington pulled off in the Visitors: after trailing the British crew on the Bucks station to both the Barrier and Fawley (and a good bit beyond), the Huskies got in front right when it counted most. Official verdict? “Three Feet”—-with a new course record to boot.
Full report on the Finals Day, and what it meant to both winners and the second place crews, to follow in the morning.
Read about all the Finals, and outcomes, here: HRR Race Summaries.
Notes From the Course
The Experience of Being a Finalist: it was mentioned several times today that being a crew that is still alive on the Sunday has already achieved that special status of becoming a Henley Finalist—and one element of that is the round of applause each crew gets on the way “down to the Start.” The Regatta works diligently—with the help of a Steward in the “Crow’s Nest” managing a red/green stop sign—to ensure that each crew rows the top 1/4 of the way down the course itself, while the announcer recites their name and event to those in the Enclosures. GB's 2008 Olympic Champ Mark Hunter, on Crow’s Nest duty this morning, recounted how special that moment was for him as a schoolboy in the Fawley finals—-a cherished memory not dimmed even by winning Olympic Silver in front of a frenzied home crowd at Dorney in 2012.
Comparing Notes: the second thing Kara Kohler and fellow 202one Olympian Imogen Grant did when crossing the line, after congratulating each other of course, was to check their splits and compare their times to yesterday. It was an interesting reminder that even these races are just part of a longer journey for these elite athletes on the road to Worlds and, eventually for some, Paris 2024.
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