George Washington University Athletics
George Washington University
Head of the Charles
Rowing Competes at Head of the Charles
10/24/2002 12:00:00 AM | Crew
Oct. 24, 2002
WASHINGTON, DC - The GW men's and women's crews traveled to Boston this past weekend for the 38th running of the Head of the Charles Regatta. The race covers three miles as the Charles River winds through the heart of Boston. Thousands of competitors travel from all over the globe to compete for the title of "Head of the Charles" in one of the 43 events. Tens of thousands of spectators lined the shores for the full three miles making the Head of the Charles the largest single-day rowing event in the world.
The GW men and women sent their varsity eights to compete in the most prestigious and most competitive of all the events, the Men's and Women's Championship Eights. By entering these events they not only competed against the top colleges from the U.S., but many National team crews from the U.S., Australia and Great Britain.
Unfortunately for the GW men, a collision occurred involving the GW men's shell shortly after launching for their race in the warmup area. Due to confusion over the traffic pattern in the warmup area, the GW shell collided with the Women's Varsity Eight from Brown University, who were also warming up for their race. Although both shells suffered some damage in the collision, they are repairable.
For the women, the Championship eight event provided an opportunity to see early in the year how they stack up against the other top collegiate crews in the United States. In fact, the Head of the Charles regatta has three women's eights events in which more than 100 collegiate women's crews competed. The Championship eight is comprised of the top 40 women's crews of the regatta racing for the title of Head of the Charles. For the GW women, their result in the Championship eight marked continued improvement from their first fall head race three weeks ago. Prior to coming into the race, they had suffered a 15-second loss to cross-town rival Georgetown at the Head of the Potomac. Since then, the crew has gone back to the basics focusing on developing a more efficient rhythm and improving bladework. Looking at the results (this time they finished 16 seconds ahead of that same Georgetown crew), things seem to be working. Although the women fell a little short of their goal of being in the top 20 colleges in the country (they finished as the 26th college overall), they did beat league rivals Navy, Rutgers and Georgetown, and were only a few seconds behind Columbia, and Boston College.
Final results for the Women's Championship 8 (47 crews entered)
1. U.S. National Team 16:12.9
2. British National Team 16:16.9
3. Yale 16:34.4
4. Princeton 16:44.1
5. Stanford 16:53.1
30. GW 18:04.0
For complete results for this and other events visit the official Head of the Charles website at: http://www.hocr.org
Next up for the Colonial Crews will be this Saturday as the team travels to Philadelphia for the the Head of the Schuylkill regatta, and then they travel to Princeton, NJ, for the Princeton Chase on Sunday.
For complete results visit the row2k website at:
http://row2k.com/results/resultspage.cfm?UID=913895&cat=2
