Harvard-Radcliffe Lightweights Defend V8+ Title at The 61st Head of the Charles Regatta

The Massachusetts winter winds came early this year, but they were no damper on the hundreds of thousands of spectators descending upon the Charles River to watch the reigning national medalists, the Harvard-Radcliffe lightweight rowing team, compete in the 61st annual Head of the Charles Regatta. The team defended its Head of the Charles title in the V8+, defeating Georgetown by 0.021 seconds to win gold yet again.

The 61st annual was the Black and White’s first under the direction of new head coach Libby Hughes and assistant coach Tony Delgreco.

Coxswain and junior captain Ella Sheth joined fellow captains Rikke Nielsen in the bow seat and Mary Mangan in the stroke seat to lead the V8+ to victory.

In the first race of the weekend for Harvard-Radcliffe, sophomore Sita Hug competed as coxswain as the V4+ “A” earned third place in the lightweight fours division, completing the course with a time of 18:05.643,

Harvard-Radcliffe’s V4+ “B” boat raced to a 10th place finish, with sophomore Carrie Truong coxing, recording a final time of 18.36:115.

The rowers certainly weren’t alone in the fight, though, as rowing on the familiar waters of the Charles brought with it masses of family, friends, and fans cheering on Harvard’s four teams from various points along the three-mile course.

“You can really feel that magic when there are so many people supporting you and what you’re doing, and having a deep appreciation for what they’re doing because what they do is really hard,” Hughes said.

“The fact that they come here and they see people flock in from everywhere across the country, across the globe, and they get to feel that when they’re on the water, it goes such a long way, and it just helps continue to build that energy and build upon that legacy that we’ve had for many years,” the head coach added.

The Head of the Charles, as Hughes emphasized, attracts competitors and spectators from across the globe, with over 12,000 athletes representing 32 different countries.

From tryouts to warm-weather practices, Harvard-Radcliffe has spent the first half of the fall semester preparing for the world’s largest three-day rowing regatta on its home course.

Leading up to the regatta, Hughes emphasized, “The thing that has been just so great is that all of the athletes are so excited. They’re working really hard. They’ve been putting their all out on the water every day.”

“They put their whole heart into this, and they have a really positive attitude going into every single day. They want to learn something every single day when they get out on the water.”

As much as the Head of the Charles was a major competition for the team, Hughes explained the mentality going into the race by sharing that, “We’ve been talking a lot about how the Charles is such a wonderful regatta. There’s so much energy, there’s pressure on it too, but I think going into this weekend, the goal was to go out there and have it be just like any other practice day.”

“We aim to be at least one percent better than we were the day before,” Hughes said, echoing her sentiment from her first week on the job. “And approaching this race with that mentality gave them the space to really execute the race the way they wanted to and be able to perform as they do on practice day, which is loose and free and able to get the blade on the water.”

In the lightweight fours race, the V4+ “A” boat trailed its local rival and IRA Championship runner-up team, Boston University’s “A” boat (17:57.125) by 8.518 seconds.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison narrowly bested the Black and White, crossing the finish line near Herter Park in 18:04.26 to earn second place in the V4+ race.

Western Ontario (18:12.284) and Queen’s (18:22.787), two Canadian visitors, rounded out the top five, earning fourth and fifth, respectively.

Despite the V4+ “A” being a rather young boat with freshman Giuliana Cardinale and sophomore Louisa Carter as stroke pair, the Black and White got out to an early advantage, leading Wisconsin by two seconds as the teams passed cheering fans at Weld Boathouse.

BU trailed Harvard-Radcliffe by just under four seconds before beginning an impressive push to the top.

This particular boat was no stranger to high-stakes competition, as reigning IRA doubles champion senior Emilia Vukasinovic and reigning IRA silver medalist in the V4+ senior Sam Angel made up the stroke pair in the Terriers’ V4+ “A” boat.

Rowing from Weld to the Cambridge Boat Club (CBC) in 4:58.005, BU gapped the Black and White by over five seconds in that critical stretch, while Harvard-Radcliffe took 5:03.882.

Wisconsin also lagged behind the Terriers as it made it from Weld to the CBC in 5:04.032 seconds.

With freshman Brenna Thomas and junior Hannah Marks as bow pair, the V4+ “A” charted the final stretch from the CBC to Herter Park in 3:10.095.

3:10, the seventh-best split time, gave BU and Wisconsin enough room to widen the gap on the Black and White, firmly solidifying the bronze medal place for Harvard-Radcliffe.

Yet after a third in the fours and a third-place finish at IRA Championships last spring, third wasn’t going to cut it for the V8+.

Rowing the course in 15:58.458, the V8+ bested Georgetown (15:58.479, 2nd) by 0.021 seconds and the reigning national champion and Ivy rival Princeton (16:10.082, 3rd) by 11.624 seconds.

While BU (16:18.049, 4th) and Wisconsin (16:26.121, 5th) both had a strong presence at nationals – second and sixth, respectively — last year, Georgetown’s silver medal splash on the Charles came as a surprise to many observers.

At every checkpoint along the three miles, the Hoyas were within two seconds of Harvard-Radcliffe, with their strongest stretch coming from Weld to the CBC, where they outpaced the Black and White by just over a second, finishing in 4:24.972 versus 4:26.139.

An impressive early lead made much of the difference for the ultimately victorious Black and White, as it led Georgetown 3:36.608 to 3:37.716 at the Riverside Boathouse checkpoint just past the Charles’s first bend.

While the gap progressively narrowed after its boat passed a rowdy crowd at Weld Boathouse, Harvard-Radcliffe’s 1.24-second advantage that it accumulated before the Anderson Memorial Bridge was enough to hold on to victory.

The margin of victory? Just 0.021 seconds.

A human eye takes about 0.1 to 0.4 seconds to blink. The Black and White literally won in less than the blink of an eye.

Each individual frame of the movie you might see in theaters, after Harvard-Radcliffe’s victory and continued dominance is made into a movie, is shown for an average of 0.0416 seconds.

0.021 is less than the amount of time left on the clock in the Lavell Edwards Stadium in Provo, Utah (one second), despite the game between No. 2 Notre Dame and No. 8 BYU being prematurely ended after 59 minutes and 59 seconds.

Simply stated, 0.021 is both an incredible photo finish and an opportunity for Harvard-Radcliffe to take the winter to celebrate while getting one percent — or 0.021 seconds — better every day.

As the Charles River slowly freezes over, Hughes emphasized that the team’s goal is to get faster during the winter.

“They’ve proved today that we’re really increasing the depth of our program, the strength of our program, and we see athletes who have joined the program recently, as novices walked on in college, who are really stepping up and putting that competitive pressure on their teammates, and everybody is responding really well to that, and just continuing to make each other faster,” she said.

For a V8+ boat emerging victorious over its IRA competitors, it could be easy to gain a false sense of confidence about how fall results will translate to spring success, but both Hughes and Delgreco shared hopefulness for the mindset and attitudes the rowers showed in the boathouse and on the water.

“A lot of boats wanted to bring that energy,” Delgreco said, praising his team’s mindset during the race.

“Even after the results, whether they knew that they had won or whatever placement that they had, they had a lot of critical thought that they could have with the race and what we can build off of that, and still staying hungry for that growth mindset, so we will build throughout the rest of the winter and set ourselves up for a solid spring, as well,” the assistant coach added.

In its final fall competition, Harvard-Radcliffe will once again take to the Charles to compete in the much smaller, yet still anticipated, Foot of the Charles on Nov. 7.

A 0.021-second margin, a young but competitive V4+ boat, and a passionate community behind it made the Head of the Charles 2026 a major success for the Black and White, which can look forward to the spring season knowing it has once again defended its home waters.

—Staff writer Leo P. Petropoulos can be reached at [email protected].