Gliding along the
water and getting a
full-body workout
while zipping
under bridges and
appreciating the city
from a distance—it’s
no wonder scullers
are attracted to this
highly physical yet
picturesque sport.
All in all, the 2010 Head of the Charles
Regatta, a two-day rowing event in its
45th year, hosted 9,001 entrants and
entertained more than 320,000 specta-
tors in October. Frederick Schoch, a for-
mer rowing coach at Princeton and the
U.S. Naval Academy, and for the past
20 years executive director of the
regatta, calls the event “the Kentucky
Derby or Super Bowl of rowing.”
Home to the 1852 Harvard–Yale
crew race, the first intercollegiate
sporting event of any kind in America,
the Charles deserves its reputation
as the country’s foremost river for
rowing. A year before that matchup,
the Union Boat Club built the first of
11 boathouses still in operation on the
Charles. By the mid-19th century, row-
ing was arguably the greatest spectator
sport in America, the U.K., Canada and
Australia. Thousands of people would
line the banks of the Charles, Thames
and Hudson rivers, wagering large
quantities of money as they watched
t wo scullers or crew teams battle to
the finish line. A May 17, 1879, article
in The Ne w York Times records over
