With the Harvard clock tower in the background, throngs of spectators crowded onto Weeks Bridge and on both sides of the Charles River to watch participants row for their best times during the Singles Championship Race and other races at the 38th annual Head of the Charles Regatta.
Twenty-nine-year-old Duncan Free of Australia defended his title during the Men’s Singles Championship race, finishing the three-mile winding course in 18:11.679, only seconds before Medford’s Steve Tucker, who finished at 18:16.128. Michael Perry finished third with a time of 18:22:00.
Free, who won last year’s competition, was also victorious in Sunday evening’s Charles Schwab 550-meter ‘Dash for the Cash,’ a final race between the top three men’s and women’s rowers.
In the women’s race, Rumyana Neykova, of Bulgaria, beat last year’s winner, Carol Skricki, and all other competitors by more than 45 seconds. Neykova, a silver medalist at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and winner of the 2000 Head of the Charles, finished at 19:10.02.
Californian Kristin Goodrich finished second in the women’s race with a time of 20:07.250. Katrin Rutschow-Stomporowski, of Germany, came in third at 20:09.589.
All day rowers battled each other, tight bends, strong winds and Canadian Geese getting in the way.
‘You would think a tail-wind would be helpful, but it really makes it difficult to row the blades just bounce off the white caps,’ said an announcer at the Charles Schwab tent.
Aran Nulty, the assistant coach for Wesleyan University’s team, said she always watches from Weeks Bridge. According to her, boats frequently run into each other and sometimes boats crash into the bridge.
‘It’s fun to watch all the collisions at the Weeks Bridge turn,’ Nulty said.
‘The Head of the Charles is the ultimate rowing experience,’ said Leah Ralph, a former Head of the Charles participant for Wesleyan University. ‘When you’re a rower, you get caught up in the culture; this is the culmination of it.’
‘I had never seen it before, so I thought I’d check it out,’ Young said. ‘I probably should have researched it more we had to ask a group from Texas what was going on.’
Coming from Syracuse, N.Y. to watch her friend in a youth race, Jake Hallman, 17, was impressed with the number of people there.
‘It’s so well-advertised,’ Hallman said. ‘Where we come from, no one knows about it, but here, everyone knows about it.’