Another Head of the Charles Regatta has come to a close in Boston, Mass. and with it the 2024 HOCR champions return to their respective training facilities with impressive hardware.
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Saturday’s racing included the acclaimed championship singles races with Michelle Sechser (18:54.711), Paris Olympian in the women’s lightweight double that advanced to the A final, finishing first followed by Kara Kohler (18:59.714), who saw a fifth-place finish in Paris. 2024 Olympic silver medalist, and 2020 gold medalist Emma Twigg crossed the line in ninth place with a time of 19:21.452.
Finn Hamill, competing for Waikato Rowing Club in New Zealand, took first place in the men’s single in 17:05.470.
“It’s pretty amazing,” Hamill told Rowing New Zealand in an interview on Sunday. “I’m still struggling to believe it’s real. It’s my first time here and I know that your course is a big part of your end result so I’ve been studying up on that. It basically went as good as it could have.”
Hamill recalls rowing with Twigg in the Coastal Mixed Quadruple Sculls at the 2024 World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals. With Twigg’s suggestion Hamill decided to submit an entry at the Charles.
HOCR also offers a unique opportunity for alumni across the globe to return to their glory days for a race down the course with their past teammates. In the men’s alumni eights the University of Washington alumnus claimed first in 14:07.670 and on the women’s side Stanford University placed first in 16:00.465.
The club eights, which also took place on Saturday, featured a mixture of clubs, collegiate clubs, DIII teams, DI teams, and others. Yale University won the women’s club eight in 15:57.855 after winning gold in the same event in 2023 with a time of 16:10.900. Radcliffe finished second in 16:31.298. For the men, Dartmouth College had the fastest time (14:18.752) and Riverside Boat Club out of Cambridge, Mass. finished second in 14:36.761.
In the women’s championship eights, Leander Club, one of the oldest rowing clubs in the world from Henley-on-Thames, UK, saw a three-second win (15:30.452) over collegiate Yale (15:33.627). The lightweight “great eight” with Sechser in the six seat and Paris Olympic gold medalist in the lightweight women’s double sculls Imogen Grant in the stroke seat came in fifth in a time of 15:46.199.
Cambridge University Boat Club won the men’s championship eights in a blistering 13:46.333. Harvard was the top collegiate crew with a time of 13:49.053.
“Competition and pushing yourself is good for people,” said the Bolles-Parker Head Coach for Harvard Men’s Heavyweight Crew, Charley Butt, regarding HOCR as a whole. “To put yourself on the line and to put yourself on the line for your teammates when you’re trying to do something difficult—it’s great to have other people to do it with. It is a huge alumni event for us, like it is for every school. Across the collegiate eights and the alumni eights, we have guys who’ve rowed here 40 and 50 years ago and guys who rowed here a decade ago.”
