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Two-time defending lightweight national champion Harvard enters the 2026 racing season ranked #1 in the Rowing News Rankings for lightweight men. The Crimson, undefeated for two years running, winners of the both the first and second eights at the 2025 IRA National Championship Regatta, and current holders of Henley Royal Regatta’s Temple Challenge Cup, open their spring campaign April 4 in Ithaca, N.Y. against #4 Cornell and Penn for the Mathews-Leonard Cup and Franklin Cup.
The rest of the initial ranking follows the finish order at last year’s IRA with the exception of Cornell, who finished second to Harvard at the Eastern Sprints but were kept home from the IRA by their administration, slotted in at #4
The men’s varsity lightweight collegiate racing seasons gets underway in earnest at the National Collegiate Lightweight Invitational at Overpeck Park in Leonia, N.J.
Rowing News Rankings, Lightweight Men
March 9, 2026
- Harvard
- Dartmouth
- MIT
- Cornell
- Pennsylvania
- Princeton
- Navy
- Georgetown
- Yale
- Columbia
