M. Lightweight Crew Tops Dartmouth, MIT for Biglin Bowl

It’s about time the Harvard men’s lightweights found a permanent place for the Biglin Bowl in Newell Boathouse.

With a dominating sweep over Dartmouth and MIT Saturday, the Crimson captured the Biglin Bowl for the third consecutive time and the ninth time in 10 seasons.

“I think top to bottom it shows how strong of a boathouse we have,” senior seven-seat Michael Kummer said. “Every race this weekend shows the pervasive attitude of competitiveness within the squad.”

After a 1.5-second loss to Georgetown on April 10, the Harvard varsity boat responded with an impressive near 10-second trouncing of second-place Dartmouth. MIT finished almost 30 seconds behind the victorious Crimson boat.

A sloppy start doomed Harvard in its race against Georgetown last week, and a similar sluggish beginning against Cornell and Penn in the season’s first dual race made the Crimson wary of another poor start against Dartmouth and MIT. In its two previous dual races, Harvard was forced to play catch-up after the race’s opening 25 strokes.

“We had been working on our start,” Kummer said. “We knew that at least for the varsity, the start of our race has been weaker than in years past.”

The work paid off for the Crimson Saturday, with Harvard sprinting to an early lead.

When the Crimson settled into its base cadence after the first furious 25 strokes of the race, Harvard found itself almost half a boat up on Dartmouth and MIT.

As the race neared the halfway mark, the Crimson began a slow, steady walk through the Big Green boat.

“We wanted to attack the first five hundred [meters] and renew that attack through the one thousand,” Kummer said, “and consistently think about being aggressive, aggressive, aggressive through the whole race.”

The mentality stuck throughout the middle 1,000 meters of the race. The Crimson increased its lead over its two fading opponents, supplying enough pressure to continually widen the margin in the second half of the course.

It was the impressive start, however, that gave a stronger Harvard boat yet another edge over its competition.

“We wanted to be as aggressive as possible off the start and work very hard to get our boat up to speed,” Kummer said. “We knew that we could rely on a very solid, strong base pace.”

The Crimson crossed the line in 5:50.9, almost six seconds faster than the varsity’s time in the loss to Georgetown. Dartmouth followed in 6:00.7, more than three boat lengths behind Harvard. MIT rounded out the trio in 6:20.1.

The second varsity raced to a 10-second victory over Dartmouth, finishing in 5:57.5. The Big Green made it to the finish in a time of 6:07.6.

“Our JV is extremely fast this year,” said first varsity six-seat Dave Stephens. “That bodes really well for the entire program because if the JV’s fast, hopefully the varsity is fast as well.”

As the first varsity warmed up for its race, the second varsity sprinted by at the 1,250 meter mark of its race, maintaining a sizeable open-water advantage over Dartmouth.

“Watching them gives us a lot of confidence going into our race,” Stephens said. “In any other year, the guys in the JV boat would be in the varsity boat.”

The first freshman boat could not replicate the strong start of the first varsity, but a strong performance in the middle of the race gave the Crimson a convincing two-second win over Dartmouth.

After a shaky start, Harvard fell down by four seats through the first 500 meters, outpaced by a strong Dartmouth crew. But the Crimson relied on patience through the 500-meter mark to pull even and then ahead of the Big Green. By 1,500 meters down, the Crimson had made up a length on Dartmouth, going from four seats down to four seats up over the second-place Big Green.

“We went in pretty pumped,” stroke Moritz Hafner said. “We were really pumped because we had a bad race last Sunday and we were going to make up for that.”

The Crimson finished almost a boat length ahead of Dartmouth, using an effective move in the final 500 meters to gain nearly four more seats in the choppy waters of a brisk tailwind. Harvard crossed in a time of 6:05.6, and Dartmouth followed in 6:07.6. Third-place MIT finished in 6:35.9.

Two varsity fours also outpaced Dartmouth, with both finishing several lengths in front of the Big Green.

The sweep and the Biglin Bowl victory is the Crimson’s last tune-up before next week’s showdown with Navy.

“If we are to beat Navy, it’s going to be very close,” Stephens said. “It’s pretty much anybody’s race.”

Last year, Navy bested Harvard for first place in the Eastern Sprints Championships and went on to capture the national crown at the 2004 IRAs.

The Crimson varsity fell to the Midshipmen by 1.1 seconds in last year’s dual race in Annapolis. Navy enters the race having defeated Georgetown by five seconds, the only boat to beat Harvard thus far.

“It’s going to be a fun race,” Kummer said. “It’s going to be a mentally taxing one, and we’re going to make it a physically taxing one. They’re going to present us with a challenge and we’re going to have fun dealing with it.”

—Staff writer Aidan E. Tait can be reached at atait@fas.harvard.edu.