SEATTLE — On a windy Saturday that saw the competition come from far and wide but put up very little resistance, the most appropriate line came from a 20-something Londoner whose college days are behind him.
Peter Marsland, a graduate who came to Seattle as part of the University of Cam
bridge crew team that competed in Saturday’s Windermere Cup, was asked after the final race what he saw from his University of Washington counterparts.
“I didn’t see too much of them, to be perfectly honest,” he said after his Cambridge boat lost in the Men’s Windermere Cup final by a convincing margin of 19.3 seconds — or about six boat lengths. “They kind of just shot off.”
During an annual event that brings out tens of thousands of spectators, the one thing this year’s Windermere Cup lacked was any serious competition. The UW boats braved windy conditions to breeze to victories in both the men’s and women’s finals as well as three previous collegiate races — all of which were decided by more than two boat lengths over the 2,000-meter course.
“We have such a huge advantage here,” UW women’s coach Bob Ernst said. “This is our crowd, it’s our course, we’re so used to (the conditions). Certainly, with as many Huskies as there are on a day like this, our kids just want to throw it down; it doesn’t matter who’s here.”
The men’s Windermere Cup was the day’s final race and UW won it in 5:43.2, fighting through a choppy first 500 meters before pulling away from second-place Stanford (5:55.7) and Cambridge (6:02.5) without much drama at all.
The top-ranked Huskies were satisfied with the performance, especially with the Pac-10 championships coming up next weekend.
“It’s a championship week now, and the guys know that,” UW men’s coach Michael Callahan said. “It put a little more pressure on this race, and our guys came to row — for sure.”
Cambridge’s performance, in hindsight, was entirely understandable. After losing the prestigious annual event known as The Boat Race less than a month ago, the program had done very little training to prepare for Saturday’s event. Several members of Cambridge’s top boat were left behind in England because of academic conflicts, and the remaining rowers had been conditioned for a much longer race — 6.8 kilometers, as compared to the two-kilometer Windermere Cup.
“A little bit disappointed with our performance,” Cambridge coach Mark Edward Beer said. “… A bit of a scratch group this week, and they’ve also been enjoying the hospitality quite well. They rowed pretty well, but looking at UW, they’re pretty sharp.”
The international aspect of the Windermere Cup brings in programs with different pedigrees, and Cambridge is no different. The prestigious British school does not offer athletic scholarships, allows post-graduates like Marsland to compete and spends the entire year gearing up for one single event: The Boat Race, an annual duel with Oxford.
Beer acknowledged that his team was built for more of a marathon than the 2,000-meter sprint that is U.S. crew, but he did give the Huskies plenty of credit when asked how they might fare if invited to The Boat Race.
“The Boat Race is a completely different race,” Beer said. “We train for a 19-minute race; these guys are training for a sub-six-minute race. I think if they were to race in The Boat Race and train for it properly, these guys here would be hard to beat.”
In the women’s Windermere Cup, UW (6:42.6) was just as dominant. Second-place Oklahoma (6:57.1) was more than 14 seconds slower than the Huskies, while Cambridge (7:05.3) finished 22.7 seconds back for third place.
Ernst shuffled up the Huskies’ lineup since a loss to top-ranked Cal in their last outing, with freshman Camilla Andersen moving in as the stroke. He said the new look may have been a factor in UW getting out of the gates faster.
“In the Cal race, all four races they beat us in, they had a boat length on us by two minutes into the race,” Ernst said. “We can’t do that. After that, it’s not a race anymore — it’s a parade.”
For all intents and purposes, Saturday’s event was a bit of a parade as well. Other than some of the earlier races that included club teams and high schools, including crews from the Everett Rowing Association and the Lake Stevens Rowing Club, there were no close finishes by day’s end.
The Everett Rowing Association women’s eight (for rowers 50-years-old and older) took third in a four-shell race, rowing the course in 7:57.8. ERA’s boys junior club eight finished second (6:17.2) on its five-crew race and its girls junior club eight was last (7:38.5) in its five-shell race.
The Lake Steven’s Rowing Clubs boys high school four shell finished third (7:07.7) in a five-crew race.
Blustery conditions, with unseasonably strong winds ranging from 20 to 26 miles per hour, made racing more difficult Saturday, Ernst said. Typically, the winds on race day range from 7 to 10 mph, he added.
“It gets like this from time to time,” Ernst said, “but it hasn’t been like this in a real long time. On a day like this, it takes some real courage to throw it down. There were waves breaking over the kids’ backs and over the rigors. It was tough stuff; a tough day.”
The guests that traveled the farthest were impressed nonetheless. Cambridge’s Marsland said that, despite the winds and the one-sided races, the week was everything he could have expected and more.
“I’ve been totally blown away by the whole experience,” he said. “… Rowing’s not a sport that draws crowds, and today there were thousands of people there. It’s great. It’s really inspirational. I hope that everyone down there enjoyed themselves equally.”
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