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Alumni Face Off Against Harvard and Others in Beijing Rowing Regatta
May 2002
by James Donahue James Donahue ’00 lives in Boston and works for the U.S. Treasury Department. As a Yale athlete, you have several occasions over four years to prove your excellence against that school from Cambridge. But few athletes have the opportunity to compete against Harvard after graduation. This past September, nine heavyweight Yale alumni oarsmen were granted such an opportunity—in China. After successfully bidding for the 2008 Olympic Games, the Chinese government and Motorola teamed up to sponsor the first Motorola University Rowing Regatta to promote the Olympics in China. Yale, Harvard, Cambridge, and Oxford were invited to send their rowing teams to compete against Tsinghua, Peking, Fudan, and Jiatong universities. The winner would be determined in a series of 6,000-meter dual races on the narrow, twisting Kunyu River. Due to school policies, Harvard and Yale were unable to send enrolled students. Dave Vogel '71, head coach of Yale’s heavyweight crew team, sent out word that he was looking for alumni who were up to the task of racing four miles against some of the best rowers in the world. In the end, Vogel selected ten rowers, seven of whom had at some point in their undergraduate careers won the four-mile race against Harvard in New London, Connecticut. The lineup included Steven Pritzker '99, Alex Reid '99, Eirik Lilledahl '98, Jim Donahue ’00, Rob Welsh '01, Dr. Michael Curi '96, Josh Lerner '01, Mark McCusker '99, Lucas McLoughlin '99, and Phil Mann '01. For the preliminaries held on Saturday, Yale drew Oxford. Only the four fastest times of the day would race for the title of champion on Sunday, so a solid performance was critical. Fortunately, the powerful Yale crew moved quickly away from Oxford within the first mile and won by two minutes. The Harvard crew, powered by five Olympians, beat a strong Cambridge boat by over a minute, while Tsinghua dominated their competition. A draw Saturday night decided the match-ups for the following day—Yale would face Tsinghua, while Harvard drew Cambridge. Yale and Tsinghua arrived early the next morning at the flat course crowded with over 300,000 spectators on the shores. As the referee lined up the crews, the crowd grew silent only to open up with a deafening roar at the sound of the starting pistol. Yale and Tsinghua got off to a blazing start, both boats striking at 38 strokes per minute and settling to a 33. The Yale alumni boat jumped out to an early lead of about 9 seats only to lose it moments later when Tsinghua raised their stroke count and moved back to within two seats of even. The two talented crews battled back and forth over the next two miles until the first turn of the course. Yale, positioned to take the disadvantageous outside of the turn, edged in front of Tsinghua to capture the inside of the turn. Tsinghua, relentless in pursuit, continued to cut into Yale’s lead. Remarkably, the alumni crew and coxswain were able to maneuver through the turn, maintaining a lead into the last 750 meters in which both crews were poised to sprint for victory. Yale held off Tsinghua’s advances in the last 500 meters and won by a scant 3.43 seconds, finishing in a time of 19 minutes and 8 seconds. The time was approximately 90 seconds faster than the mark posted the day before by the Yale team. Rowers in both boats collapsed in exhaustion. Although Yale had won this race, it was not until Harvard and Cambridge finished that the winner of the regatta was announced. With all four boats by the awards platform, the race organizers announced Yale as the victor. The alumni, racing in what many of them considered to be one of the hardest races in their lives, were overcome with joy with the realization that not only were they once again racing for Yale, but that many of them had once again beaten Harvard in another race for the ages. |
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