Crew Voyages to Egypt For Nile River Races

Eleven members of the Harvard heavyweight crew will leave for Egypt Tuesday to take part in two days of racing on the Nile.

The races on December 19 and 22 are part of the Nile River Festival and coach Harry Parker indicated that this out of season trip will be a time for fun and sightseeing as well as competition.

Harvard will be competing against Yale, Cambridge and Oxford as well as Egyptian crews. Parker said he expected the stiffest competition to come from the two British schools.

Parker said that his crew was not in top racing condition at this time but they had been in heavy training this fall in anticipation of next summer's Olympics.

"We hope to be competitive," Parker said, "but will be in a difficult situation racing after the long trip and in borrowed boats." The boats used in the Egyptian races will be lighter than the ones used in the United States, he said.

Harvard received an invitation on December 1 to attend the regatta as a guest of the Egyptian Government Tourist Office. Parker said that he discussed the invitation with his crew and they decided to go. "The guys are pretty excited about going," he said.

The Egyptian government will pay for the crew's food and lodging as well as transportation between Cairo and London. The individual team members will have to pay for the round trip between Boston and London.

Because both Harvard and Yale participated in the Head of the Charles Regatta in October, they had to get waivers of an Ivy League rule barring participation in more than one out-of-season event, in order to participate.

Team members taking the trip are seniors Dave Sawyier, Pete Sutton and Bo Weisheit; juniors Gene LaBarre, Bill Mahoney; and sophomore John Canady, Steve Carr, Dave Fellows, Steve Row, Rick Smith and coxswain Dave Weinberg.

Summing up the trip, Parker said, "I don't know exactly what we are getting into. The last American crew to row on the Nile crashed into a dead camel."