Hudson Hurly-Burly

For confusion, Hellzapoppin had to play second fiddle to what happened 70 miles farther up the Hudson last week. There, off Poughkeepsie--under murky skies and over wind-whipped whitecaps--America's top-notch college crews (except Harvard and Yale) met in the 43rd annual Intercollegiate Regatta.

The freshman two-mile curtain raiser, scheduled for 3 o'clock, went off in routine fashion: Cornell defeated its three rivals.

An hour later, when six junior varsity eights lined up for their three-mile race, a stiff head wind had become considerably stiffer. Before the shells had traveled 200 yards, coxswains were busy bailing. Presently the Washington boatload began slowly to sink like the orchestra in Radio City's Music Hall. Official launches scurried to the rescue, scurried on to rescue Syracuse, Columbia, California. Cornell and Navy managed to stay afloat for nearly a mile. Frantic horn-tooting and whistle-blowing finally notified them that the race had been called off.

For three hours, regatta bigwigs waited for the wind to die. The varsity four-mile race was postponed from 5 to 6, to 7, to 8.

At 8:15, with a heavy upstream tide to contend with, eight varsity crews got away. Had chilled onlookers not been disgruntled by long delay and frequent false alarms, they might have taken home memories of a great race.

Slick-skimming Syracuse set the pace, followed by Navy, Cornell and Washington, the favorite. At the two-mile mark, when Syracuse had burned itself out, Washington's Huskies inched ahead. At the railroad bridge they were three-quarters of a length in front. But from behind came powerful, undefeated Cornell, pride of the East. Down the last mile, the Big Red crew pulled alongside the Huskies, rowed bow & bow.

From the banks, in the gathering darkness, it looked as if they passed the judges' float in a photo finish. But when the results were run up, Washington was declared the winner (for the third time in five years) by nearly half a length--with Syracuse third, Navy fourth and Princeton, making its debut in the Intercollegiate, eighth and last. To the victorious crew went added glory when it was learned that they had 1) rowed 2 1/2 extra miles to the starting line earlier in the afternoon only to discover that, unbeknown to them, the race had been postponed; 2) rowed the last mile with a broken tiller rope.

After most of the crowd had called it a day (spectators on the observation train had shuttled 30 miles during their six-hour watch), the ill-fated junior varsity race took place in pitch darkness with lanterns lighting the way. Washington won that too.

At New London three days later, in their private crew race, Harvard's varsity trounced Yale for the fifth year in a row. making the score for their 78-year rivalry: 39-to-39.

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