New Crew

The giants of U.S. crew racing were on hand for the Eastern sprint championships on Massachusetts' Lake Quinsigamond. Undefeated were high-stroking Navy, powerful Pennsylvania, and a veteran Harvard boat that had won 13 straight over the last two years. Against that kind of company, the inexperienced Cornell crew seemed the rankest sort of outsider. Result: Cornell won.

With the championships approaching, Cornell's Coach Harrison ("Stork") Sanford had a varsity crew that rowed as though its shell had a lead keel. Cornell had raced only once this year, finishing a poor second to Navy over a short course. Indeed, Sanford's varsity could not even beat the Cornell junior varsity crew; the jayvees twice won practice races last week by three lengths. To Sanford, there was only one logical answer: he made the jayvees the varsity, keeping only one man from the old crew.

In the championship sprint last weekend, Navy was favored to get off to an early lead with its power-stroking beat of around 40 strokes per minute, then fight it out at the finish with Harvard, which gets great drive from its rhythmic beat of 32. Instead, Cornell surged from the stake boats with a breathless beat of 41, moved ahead like a wide-open hydroplane. Once they had the lead, Cornell's ex-jayvees coolly dropped the beat to 31, understrok-ing even Harvard. Rowing against an 18-m.p.h. wind. Cornell held on to the end of the 2,000-meter course, beating off a desperate finishing effort by Harvard. Of the favored crews. Navy was third and Pennsylvania was sixth and last.

After the race, Harvard's Stroke Perry

Boyden stripped off his shirt, gave it to Cornell's Stroke Harry Moseley in a traditional ceremony. It was the first jersey Boyden had lost since high school, and he promised that he would win a Cornell shirt after the Olympic trials in July. But Cornell's Coach Sanford is just beginning to develop his young bunch. Said he: "We still have to learn how to sprint. I'm positive this crew of mine is far from its peak.''

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