Crew an Easy Winner in Classic Race

Harvard's fantastic crew will stop reading its press releases this week long enough to pack off to training camp and get ready for the 100th Yale race at New London, June 19.

Everyone--or almost everyone--conceded this race to Harvard long ago. The crew that has broken two course records and has won the Eastern. Sprints by three lengths is not going to put up with any nonsense from a Yale boat that didn't even make the finals of the Sprints.

The crew has already been the subject of a full-page article in the New York Times, and of two lengthy analyses in the Boston Globe (which also sent columnist Bud Collins out to cox the crew one afternoon).

Among those who is definitely not conceding is Yale coach Jim Rathschmidt. He has seen his crew lose to M.I.T. in the regular season, and to B.U. and Dartmouth--neither of which had ever beaten a Yale crew--in the Sprints. The Elis, in fact, failed to qualify for the Sprint finals for the first time in years.

But Rathschmidt is quick to point out a couple of mitigating circumstances. An attack of flu had sidelined three of his first-stringers the day of the sprints--an impossible handicap for any boat to overcome. And Harvard, Rathschmidt, adds, was shut out of the sprint finals two years ago, but came back to beat Yale in the race.

The difference of course, is that the Harvard-Yale race is four miles long--almost three times the distance of the sprint course. But Harvard has shown itself a good distance boat by shattering two records for one-and-three-quarter-mile courses--one of them by ten seconds, one by 20.

The Yale race will be televised by Channel 4.