RowingRelated

This past Sunday marked the 30th annual Crash-B Indoor Rowing World Championships, and there were some very familiar faces mixed in with a host of new ones in Boston. The University of Washington men dominated the Open event, with two elite level finishes from Conlin McCabe (overall winner in 5:48.0) and Hans Struzyna (second place overall in 5:52.6 -- he managed this while standing only 6'2" tall and weighing in at 185 lbs, according to the UW website). Is it just me, or is this maybe a statement about UW's intentions after last year's narrow defeat at the IRA? New York Athletic Club member and World Champion Jamie Koven showed that he still has much rowing ahead of him, crushing the Men's Masters (30-39) event in a time of 5:57 flat. This would be quite an achievement at any age, and is especially outstanding given the constraints his career places on his schedule. Outside of Koven, there was a noticeable lack of current men's US National Team members at...

Newell Boathouse (Photo: B. Kitch) The Fall season was dominated by Princeton , but Harvard had quite a showing at both the Charles and the Princeton Chase. Cornell's Varsity performed very well in Boston, but lacks the depth of the front runners. Yale has a ton of power, but as yet they're not applying it well enough to keep pace with their two main rivals. Georgetown also had solid showings at both the Charles and the Chase, but is anyone going to catch Princeton this year? Lightweight racing is almost always close. For that reason, and because all the programs are given very similar parts to make up the whole, it's considered by some to be the most interesting form of racing. You are unlikely to see the kind of separation from the field that Cal and Washington had in the Varsity VIII last June. Still, the Tigers had a fantastic Fall. Not only did the Varsity break the course record at the Charles (by twelve seconds), but also the Tiger JV took seventh overall. ...

Over the past few months and years we have seen a steady decline in the funding and support of 'non-revenue' men's athletics—or 'Olympic Sports' as Steve Gladstone called them while serving as Athletic Director at Cal. This process began with Title IX in 1990, and has recently picked up speed with a number of the state-funded schools experiencing financial setbacks due to the state of the economy. Just recently, we saw the latest victims here in the Bay Area fall to the economic pressures of rebuilding California and restructuring University of California finances, as the Cal Men's Baseball team was cut from the athletics department, along with the Men's Rugby team. Both were programs with a long history of success—the rugby squad was the most dominant such program in the United States, but when it comes time to cut spending, men's athletics are often the first item on the chopping block. In rowing, the few remaining varsity programs on the men's s...

The 46th running of the Head of the Charles is now over and done, and it's time to take another look at some of the predictions I made prior to the race. First -- let's look at the Men's Championship 1x: Marcel Hacker, as I expected, didn't really commit to this piece and ended up just getting pipped out of first place by Michael Sivigny . The rehabilitation from injury has Hacker slightly lighter than usual, and he was bothered more by the wind, especially coming through Eliot Bridge, than he might have been if he were racing at full strength. A very strong showing, as I predicted, from Mike Perry of the Dolphin Club, who I know has been training quite a bit for this race. Jamie Koven, my predicted winner, finished 6th. In the Championship 2x, not only did my predicted winner, the Graves brothers , repeat their feat of last year, they did it in dominant fashion, destroying the event this year by 45 seconds (yes, it was 45 seconds back to second place). I'm not sur...