Crews Lose To Brown In Nightmarish Conditions
April 14, 2000 | Men's Rowing
The men's crews, rowing in "nightmarish conditions" according to varsity coach Rodney Pratt, dropped its second regatta of the season on Saturday (April 8th) when it lost to host Brown.
"You couldn't have dreamed up a worse nightmare," Pratt said of the weather conditions that confronted the varsity heavyweight boats. With a 25-mile-an-hour head wind and tides coming from behind the boats, the 2000-meter course proved to be almost too much for the crews to handle.
Brown, one of the top-rated crews in the country, was timed in 7:10.5. To put that in perspective, Brown has been clocked this spring in just over 5:40 for 2000 meters. What's more, there are some people who predict the Brown boat will be in the 5:30-plus time before the spring season is over.
In the meantime, the Terriers were clocked in 7:47.8.
When the race first got underway, the tide was relatively calm while there was still the 20-25 mile-per-hour headwind with gusts.
Just about a minute into the race, the rigging on the Terriers' boat broke forcing the race to stop. It took 45 minutes to fix the problem, and, by then, the tides had picked up while the wind had continued to gust.
The end result was water was being taken into the boats as the race was going on.
Hence, the times turned in by the two varsity boats.
Earlier in the day, the two raced their second varsity and first freshman crews, and Brown won those races as well. The second varsity margin was 7:15.9 to 7:44.3, while the first freshmen times were 7:19.7 to 7:42.8.
