While Dartmouth's lightweight and heavyweight rowing teams failed to bring home a trophy from England's prestigious Royal Henley Regatta, the crews managed to defeat teams from Canada, England and Ireland.
In the Temple Challenge Cup, the varsity lightweights defeated Queens College of Belfast, Ireland and Trinity College of Dublin, Ireland before losing to Imperial College of London. Imperial College had won three of the last six regattas.
The Temple Challenge Cup division is for the fastest lightweight boats and for slower heavyweight boats.
Also in the Temple Challenge Cup, the junior varsity heavyweights defeated Canada's Ridley College, but lost to Yale University in the second round.
Yale went on to win the regatta.
After a first-round bye in the Ladies' Plate Competition, Dartmouth's varsity heavyweight narrowly lost to Hansa Rowing Club, a team from Hamburg, Germany.
The Ladies' Plate is an event for the most competitive eight-man club and university boats. The United State's Georgetown University and Princeton University also competed in this division.
Varsity Coach Scott Armstrong said the Hansa team proved to be an elite squad.
"Hansa Hamburg turned out to be a mixture of lightweight and heavyweight oarsmen, most of whom had just missed the Olympic squad," he said. "Many of them had world championship experience, including gold medals."
Armstrong said Dartmouth's crew kept the race close until the bitter end.
"They got the lead on us early. We tried to push into them all the way down the course, but they held us off," he said. "With 20 strokes to go, we put it all on the line, started moving up quickly."
Dartmouth's boat lost by a scant two feet.
"Heartbreaking is the right word for it," Armstrong said.
Goldie Boat Club of Cambridge, England won the Ladies' Plate Competition.
Armstrong said the Henley Regatta is a fun opportunity for an American crew.
"In our collegiate season we are very familiar with our opponents," he said. "Part of the fun of going to Henley is you race crews you know nothing about."
"Next to the Olympics and the World Championships, it is the most prestigious regatta in the world. The best oarsmen in each country get to come here," he said.
The varsity heavies raced in a boat borrowed from Georgetown University, after their boat was wrecked by the junior varsity team. During a practice, the junior varsity collided with a motorboat on the Thames.
Junior varsity rower Liam Krehbiel '98 said the motorboat driver and coxswain Eric White '98 share responsibility for the collision.
"We were coming around a corner, and this boat was on the wrong side of the river," Krehbiel said.
"The leisure boat collided in to us," he said.
"It was both [White's] fault for not seeing it in advance and the motorboat's fault for being on the wrong side of the river," Krehbiel said.
Dartmouth's lightweight team also entered a four-man boat in the Brittania Cup, which is for four-man boats.
The boat defeated Wallingford Rowing Club in the first round, but lost to in the second round.
Dartmouth alumnus Greg Lewis '94 and his partner Greg Walker took first place in the double sculls event, defeating a German boat so badly the team retired just a few meters from the finish.