The Head of the Charles Regatta was held this past weekend in Boston/Cambridge. If you were watching the ALCS game on Saturday night, you might have seen some footage of a few races going by.
This is the largest regatta in the world. Granted, The Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge is more prestigious and has more total spectators; (estimates range from 10 - 120 million TV viewers) each draws nearly a quarter of a million spectators to the banks of the rivers. But whereas Boat Race only has 36 competitors, the Charles features approximately 1,700 boats and 9,000 participants.
I rowed in the Club 8+ with Potomac BC; we also raced a Masters 8+ and a Champ 4+. Unfortunately, the Champ 4+ broke a rudder cable early in the race and had to withdraw. The Masters did very well against some tough competition. The "87 Gold" boat that passed them ended up getting disqualified because one of their rowers was found to be in his 20s, younger than the 30 year-old Masters limit. Blatantly ignoring the rules is one thing, but what makes it worse is that bow seat in that boat was none other than Mike Teti, the US national team Men's Head Coach.
NC State's rowing club also brought 2 boats, a men's Club 4+ and a Lightweight 4+. Both rowed very well, the club 4+ missing the top 50% mark by just 7 seconds.
2 comments:
Good explanation of how the two "biggest" regattas in the world differ. People don't always realize the difference in scales. I'd be interested to hear your description of how Head of the Hooch, regatta #2 in the US in terms of size, differs from Charles. Even though it's #2, it doesn't compare in prestige to many smaller regattas (I can name at least 5 head races off the top of my head that are more prestigious) due to the quality of the competitors. Charles has the size AND the most prestige. Hooch, however, will always be "the big one" to me.
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