Nobody wins after boat sinks at Harvard-Yale regatta [Video]

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Harvard sunk. Yale crossed the finish line. And the schools’ 151st regatta became the first ever to be called a no-contest.

That sums up Sunday’s running of the annual event on Connecticut’s Thames River.

Weather conditions were rough from the outset, with winds reaching up to 20 mph.

“The referee asks both crews are they prepared to race, do they want to race?” Yale Coach Steve Gladstone said. “Both crews responded they did want to race. It was very challenging conditions, and both boats had pumps, bailing pumps in the boats. I was watching it, Harvard was having a difficult time with the water.”

About three minutes into the four-mile race, Harvard’s boat was already two lengths behind and had taken in too much water to continue. An official then waved a red flag to signal the stop of the race. The Harvard rowers climbed into rescue boats as theirs went under. It was eventually towed to shore.

(The Harvard boat starts sinking around the 17-minute mark of the above video.)

“We got off to the start and then 30 or so seconds we just took a couple over-the-head waves,” Harvard coxswain Jacqueline Goodman said. “One after another pretty consecutively and the boat wasn’t able to bail, the pumps weren’t able to bail quickly enough to stay afloat.

“We’ve never rowed in conditions like that. … Those were pretty difficult conditions.”

The Yale rowers stopped once they noticed the red flag, but at some point they made the decision to finish the race.

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“For the sixth [seat] and the coxswain, it was their last race at Yale, so we were going to finish it out,” Yale junior Nate Goodman said. “There was never any real doubt among the crew about that.”

After crossing the finish line, the Yale rowers celebrated what they thought was a second straight regatta victory. No official decision was reached until hours later.

During that time, according to the Hartford Courant, race officials spoke to Harvard Coach Charley Butt, who was lobbying for a do-over, but did not meet with Gladstone.

“In most cases when there’s a misadventure, the boats get back together and they continue the race from the point of the misadventure,” Butt said. “If I didn’t challenge Yale’s contention that that was a race, then I would be remiss to the greatest degree.”

Gladstone said: “You have to finish the race and we finished the race. You’d much rather have both boats cross the finish line, of course. That’s just the way you feel about it. But we couldn’t control that in the Yale boat. We agreed to the race. They agreed to the race. The race is on.”