Boston, special envoy
Behind the foliage, a passing boat. Then another, and another, and another… In the midst of oaks, maples and sycamores, the Charles River has just welcomed, this weekend, on the east coast of the United States, the largest gathering of rowing in the world. For its fiftieth edition, the Head of the Charles Regatta (HOCR) welcomed an uninterrupted stream of boats on the waterway that separates the cities of Boston and Cambridge.
« I took a vacation just for that. It’s fascinating, this race that brings together teenagers and rowers of grandparents’ age,” explains Cynthia Espeseth, a 50-something she met in the exhibitors’ village, as she was preparing to compete in one of the races on the program. Around her, 2,266 boats, 10,476 rowers, and 61 races throughout the weekend. ” I know I might never do the Olympics, but at least I would have done the Head of the Charles,” adds the one who made the trip from Seattle where she is a priest in an Episcopal church, completely at the other end of the country.
On the car parks bordering the river, many license plates from all over the United States and surmounted by a boat. “To be here, we drove eighteen hours in a vansays Austin Burris, a 21-year-old student from Michigan, in the North. And before, to collect the money for the trip, we worked the previous months by cleaning the American football stadium of our university following the matches, or by clearing snow-covered roads. »
Speakers and folding chairs
In 1965, two members of the Cambridge Town Rowing Club decided to create the regatta to extend their season into the fall. Today, the old wooden premises of this club still host the headquarters of the Head of the Charles Regatta. On the roof, regarding thirty foreign flags. Like so many winks to all the countries represented by at least one athlete in a crew: Romania, Croatia, Turkey, Israel, England, Germany…
France is also represented, and in a rather advantageous way. The tricolor eight-man rowing team made the trip especially to line up for one of the races. “It’s not the major objective of the season, but it is a legendary rowing race”, underlines the national trainer, Yannick Schulte. In sight, the group already has the 2015 world championships which it will compete in Aiguebelette (Savoie), and the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
Binoculars, folding chairs, or a camera with a telephoto lens, each spectator has his own technique for observing the winding course of the Blues and their competitors. Here, it is better to lend an ear and listen to the loudspeakers that line the route. Each crew leaves in turn, ten seconds apart. ” Usually, highlighted Cédric Berrestalso a member of the French 8, on is used to practicing the Olympic format, with races in line of 2 kilometers in basins which almost resemble swimming pools. However, this is a time trial with different navigation rules, a much longer course. »
“Often, with these black banks of people, I have the impression that it is an arena more than 4 kilometers long”, completes his teammate Benjamin Lang. If we rely on the figure of the organizers, this fall meeting was to bring together some 400,000 spectators in the space of these two days. Crowd difficult to verify. As if nothing had happened, on the sidewalks, joggers and cyclists make their way among the many strollers pushed by the spectators.
During the competition, on the Cambridge side, motorists are prohibited from using the road that runs alongside the course. While on the Boston shore, yellow school buses transform into shuttles to take spectators from one point of the race to another. “I come every year to see the race, the river is part of our daily life, even on other days, pleasure boats often circulate there”recalls Barbara Evans, a 62-year-old nanny born and raised in Cambridge, a city of 100,000 inhabitants separated only by bridges from Boston, a metropolis six times more populated.
« Beers using a rope »
Of the bridges, the course of the Head of the Charles Regatta has five. Rather confusing, for rowers uninitiated to this type of obstacle: “If they don’t know well, they sometimes collide with their oars once morest the foundations of the bridges, so the spectators shout to warn them. In the past, some spectators placed on a bridge above them also offered them beers, using a rope, during the competition,” explains John Powers, a journalist who has covered the event since the 1970s for the Boston Globe.
In its Sunday edition, the daily devotes the front page of its sports pages to the event. A more than significant window of exposure for rowing enthusiasts. “Even in the United States, rowing is an almost invisible sport, except every year during this weekend in Boston”says Bruce Smith, executive director of Community Rowing Inc (CRI), a gigantic club that welcomes more than 1,000 rowers every day along the Charles River. “The sport also has a reputation as an elite sport and we are trying to remedy that by holding initiation sessions in Boston public schools or by offering free registration to soldiers returning from Iraq or Afghanistan”adds this French-speaking Canadian.
Harvard on the podium
For the time being, rowing in the United States remains the prerogative of the country’s prestigious universities, proud of their tradition. Evidenced by the caps, sweatshirts or K-way bearing the image of this or that establishment. In fact, the Head of the Charles Regatta owes a large part of its success to establishments in and around Boston, the country’s main university center (Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, etc.). Then to the involvement of other university sections distributed elsewhere in the country. “Of the 10,000 participants, around 60% are students”, says Fred Schoch, the race’s executive director.
No coincidence, from this point of view, that the French team had to settle for 6th place out of 36 during its race. The tricolor crew of eight rowers completed their time trial in 14 min 37 s 94. In addition to two American clubs, Craftsbury Sculling Center (1st) and the Taurus Boat Club (2nd), and the national team of United States (4th), two universities in the country managed to place themselves ahead of the French eight: those of Washington (5th) and Harvard (3rd). For the last mentioned, the performance will surely have been celebrated as it should be in its “ boathouse” in red wood which houses dozens of oars, facing the Charles River.
