Word: crew
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This psychological intensity, combined with top-level coaching and seven months of unrelieved practice, comes to a head during racing season. Beginning this weekend, when the crew competes in the San Diego Classic regatta, all the emotion cascades in a series of six-minute races that seem to suspend time. The concentrated pre-race tension is just the beginning. "It's hell on the starting line," grimaces Doug Wood, "The idea of the agony you're going to go through for six minutes is enough to make you quit. And there's always the extra pressure of a Harvard tradition...
...cheering alumni and even a few students. "It's the ultimate moment of being fulfilled," sighs Howard Johnson '81. "Eight months of training is made worthwhile in the six minutes when you prove yourself tougher, physically and mentally, than the other boat." Every victory also adds to the crew's wardrobe; each oarsman receives the racing shirt of his counterpart in the losing boat. And, of course, the oarsmen get to throw their loudly protesting coxswain into the river--even if the water is 38 degrees and polluted...
...Harvard Crew, however, isn't all professional discipline, "eight masochists and a sadist cox." Some highlights of the year have little to do with winning a race. After a particularly hard day, the "funnelator" makes its appearance on the Charles; with devastating accuracy, water balloons are launched by the giant, 15-foot slingshot against passing B.U., Northeastern and Radcliffe crews. In June training camp, the crew also exchanges funnelator sorties with the freshmen, and bombards the Yale crews rowing 200 yards away on New London's Thames River...
Training for the Yale race is a festive time. Last year one freshman, known as "The Hulk" because of his physique, was nearly painted green for the race. The crew also enjoys private screenings of recent movies each night, and stages an extremely "rude" talent show, with each skit designed to outdo the others in (?) comedy. And as a climax to the two weeks, the oarsmen delightedly watch the tradition three-and-a-quarter-mile "coxwain's race." The four Harvard coxswains, urged on by the heavy oarsman who coxes, attempt to row a boat faster than their four Yale...
...these camp hijinks, however, are only a means to stay relaxed before the Yale race, a grueling four-mile, half-hour spectacle attended by thousands of alumni and students each June. The longest crew race in the world, the Harvard-Yale regatta is the culmination of nine months of practice and six weeks of racing experience; everybody "goes for broke." At the end of last year's race, senior George Aitken fainted, while Gordie Gardiner was bent double with cramps. One oarsman recalls the agony: "I was just hurting. I didn't feel anything, any emotion. I've never hurt...