The Big Green men's heavyweight crew team overcame a blunder, that cost them nearly two boat lengths to the entire field, and came from behind to win the Bausch & Lomb Invitational Regatta in Rochester, New York last Sunday.
The mistake came early in the race when one of the Dartmouth's oars got caught up in the choppy water and brought the boat to a near stand still. At this point the boat lost about eight seconds to the field.
"That was a real wake up call for us," co-Captain Brian Palm '96 said. "After that we just started moving."
Unfortunately, the team faced an uphill battle with a 20 mile tailwind, very unstable water and a substantial amount of ground to make up.
Despite the Big Green's shaky start though, the Dartmouth men managed to pass the leading Yale crew with on three quarters of a mile to go and pulled ahead for good.
The Big Green ended up literally cruising to victory, beating Yale by almost 17 full seconds.
For the second consecutive week, the winning four-man boat consisted of Tom Gilmore '96, Todd Newman '96, James Jarrett '97, Brian Palm '96 and coxwain Trevor Peterson '96.
"Race wise, this was not our greatest performance," Palm said. "It took everything we had to win."
"We just need to tune some things up this week and hopefully be peaking for the Head of Charles," Palm added.
The Head of the Charles, held this weekend, will undoubtedly be Dartmouth's toughest test to date.
All of the country's premier crews including, Brown, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Wisconsin, along with several foreign national teams will be in competition for one of crew's most prestigious titles.
Dartmouth has qualified to compete only on the merit of its strong showing at last year's event; otherwise, they would have been forced to hope for a spot given out through a random lottery.
"This race is definitely a big step up in competition for us, we really have to be prepared," Palm said.
The Head of the Charles is the largest single day regatta in the world and between two and four hundred thousand spectators are expected to be on hand for this Sunday's race.
