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Heavyweight rowing team Credit: Dan Nessenson , Dan Nessenson

When the Penn crew teams compete in Cambridge, Mass., this fall break, there will be an unusual sight — 300,000 cheering fans.

The Head of the Charles Regatta is rowing on a grand scale. The men’s lightweight, men’s heavyweight and women’s teams will be joined by 9,000 athletes in what is the ultimate two-day competition with thousands of spectators lined along the banks of the Charles River.

Men’s heavyweight coach Greg Myhr stressed what a rarity that is in crew.

“Typically in rowing there are very few spectators,” he said. “The Head of the Charles is completely unique in that the riverbank is packed with people cheering and watching for three miles, so however long that race may take, you have people cheering and watching the whole way.”

For the guys on the water, it is quite the adrenaline rush.

“There’s noise and there’s screaming the entire race so when they get done they say, ‘That went by just like that,’” Myhr said. “They don’t usually say that after workouts.”

The competition is in head format, meaning that crews race against the clock rather than side-by-side. It is structured so that the boats start 10 seconds apart, sometimes making for fraught situations as boats run each other down and cut each other off while winding along the twisting corners of the river separating Cambridge and Boston.

“It’s a race that’s rife with struggle,” Myhr said. “One of my colleagues said to me, ‘Many things can happen at the Head of the Charles and none of them are good,’ meaning you’re on a curving, twisting course and you would be very fortunate to find the right line.”

The image is one of danger and potential disaster as teams deal with the stresses and strains of this atypical race in what at times amounts to rowing’s version of a demolition derby. To do well, a team often has to be lucky.

“You plan, you train, but sometimes there are just no answers for a coxswain. There just aren’t,” Myhr said. “You have to do what you can do and sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don’t.”

In spite of the madness, there seems to be some method to taking part in the Head of the Charles. The rowing season is a long one, stretching from the beginning of the fall semester to the end of the spring, and the monotony of training can get overwhelming.

“It’s huge for keeping the guys motivated,” Myhr said. “It’s a trip they desperately want to go on, and if you do well, you come back fired up … So it’s motivational and a lot more fun than training by yourself on the river.”

In this mindset, the regatta is seen as a useful indication of the teams’ form as they prepare for the spring season. It also allows them to go up against their Ivy rivals.

“If we’re running well with the Ivy League, then we are running well nationally,” Myhr said. “But first things first.”

In spite of this competitive edge, the regatta transcends normal sporting boundaries and creates a spectacle like no other.

“The spectators are cheering for people they know and people they don’t know,” Myhr said. “But they’re also cheering for crashes because there are all sorts of craziness that happen on the river every year.”

The challenge for the Red and Blue will be avoiding the “craziness” and navigating their way to victory.

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