MIT Crew Poses No Problem

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has never really been known for great athletics.

Stand-up comics have gotten rich with routines about the MIT football team. ("Sir? That's actually the 20-yard line segment...") Its squash team hasn't beaten Harvard in 50 years. And its crew teams aren't much better.

Yesterday morning on the Charles River, the Harvard lightweight crews swept all Techie competition, starting with the varsity's 15-second win and reaching all the way down to the second freshman boats.

"I don't think they've beaten us in recent memory," said sophomore Roger Ogden, who rows on the varsity boat. "But we still took it very seriously."

The varsity race was never really in doubt. Harvard went off the line at a 38 and settled to a 36 after 30 strokes, at which point it was already up by six seats.

The Crimson widened the lead to a length by the 500 mark, but then MIT took a "power 10" and took back a seat. But Harvard rejoined with a power piece of its own and opened about half a length of open water.

The final margin was 5:59.3 to 6:14.9. Approximately a three-and-one-half lengths of open water separated the two boats after the regulation 2000 meters.

"We kind of walked away from them," Ogden said. "It was a good race for us. We were very pleased to break the six-minute mark."

The MIT mismatch opens a stretch of four races in 11 days for the varsity, which won the national championship in 1991. First up is Navy, this weekend on the Charles.

But with the competition getting harder, breathers like the Techies are always welcome.

"We've been working out really hard, and this was a kind of training run for us," Ogden said.

Among the other boats, the chief race of note was the first freshman's successful revenge of last year's defeat--one of MIT's few triumphs in its long, dark history of competition.

Last year, MIT took advantage of several Harvard miscues to escape with a victory. This year, according to Ogden, the Techies got no such leniency.