Canadian Erg King Paces Crew

There’s some unofficial advice that tends to float through Newell Boathouse prior to ergometer speed tests.

Even for experienced oarsmen, there’s always the knowledge that immense lactic acid buildup—as common to rowing as outfield grass is to baseball—will welcome them after 2,000 exhausting meters on the erg.

Perhaps some rowers are told to pace themselves—to take the first 500 meters hard, to settle into a steady base cadence, to take a 20-stroke sprint at the 1,000 meter mark. To go all out at the finish: they’re racing, after all, even though they remain in one painful spot for 2,000 meters.

But that’s not it. Everybody—every Harvard rower, at least—has heard the same words before.

Don’t sit next to Dave Stephens. Now there’s some advice.

“He’s incredible,” says varsity lightweight bowman Nick Downing. “I’ve never seen anything like it. The heavyweights ask our erg scores and say, ‘Remind me not to get on an erg next to that guy.’”

“You sit next to him on the erg, you weigh the exact same thing he does,” varsity three-seat Griffin Schroeder adds, “and he just pulls the chain so much harder. He’s got it.”

He’s got more than skill on the erg, according to Schroeder and Downing.

“The guy is really, really clever,” Downing says. “You meet a lot of smart people at Harvard, but Dave is extraordinarily smart. He’s really sharp.”

Stephens transferred to Harvard after two years at the University of Toronto, where he was an engineering major. In his first semester at Harvard, Stephens signed up for the notorious Economics 1011a.

“Not only did he take it,” Schroeder recalls, “but it met at 8:30 a.m., and we had practice in the mornings. He didn’t tell [Harvard coach Charley Butt] that he had class at that time because he didn’t want to inconvenience the team. So he went to class once and got a flat A.”

Back in the erg room, Stephens first caught Butt’s eye in his first trip to CRASH-Bs, the world’s premier indoor rowing competition. Under Butt’s watch, Stephens sat down on an erg and churned out a 6:20.3. A high school senior two months too old for the junior division, Stephens placed 30th in the collegiate lightweight division. It was just weeks after the Harvard application deadline, so Stephens went back to Canada.

“When I first started rowing, it turned out that I was pretty good on the erg,” he says. “I actually beat everyone on my team [at Nicholson Catholic College in Ontario] in my first attempt on the erg.”

“So they weren’t very good,” he adds, laughing.

Stevens no longer has that excuse.

In 2003, he took first place in the collegiate lightweight division at CRASH-Bs and repeated the feat in 2005, despite being missing training time because of a back injury. He won the under-23 World Championships in the lightweight men’s pair division in 2002 and added an IRA title with the Crimson in 2003.

The competition has been good. Stephens has been better.

“In lightweight rowing, everybody has to be about the same size,” Schroeder says. “The only way you can rise to the top is by being a physiological freak. And that’s what Dave Stephens is.”

“The thing that I take away from rowing with the guy,” Downing adds, “[is that] he is the most physiologically gifted guy I’ve rowed with. I’ve never rowed with anyone who just possessed raw power like that. I’m telling you, this guy’s body is incredible.”

In 2004, Stephens’ body let him down, albeit briefly. He took the year off from Harvard to try out for the Canadian Olympic team, advancing to the Olympic training camp despite an early mishap at the 2004 Olympic Trials.

“We flipped before trials while warming up,” Stephens says. He was rowing in a pair.

“It was really cold and we were in the water for 10 minutes,” he continues. “They postponed the race an hour for us to get dry clothes and warm up. We ended up getting third at trials and got to go to camp. The funny thing is, we were actually ahead off the start, but our legs were completely toasted from being in the cold water.”

Once at camp, however, Stephens injured his back just a few weeks before Olympic selection. For somebody whose goal his entire rowing career has been to make the Canadian Olympic team, it was a crushing blow. He was unable to row for five months and spent his time working for an investment banking firm in Toronto. For the first time, rowing took second place.

Then Stephens returned to Cambridge in the fall of 2004, just months after the Crimson varsity lightweights finished fifth at the IRA national championship regatta.

He started rowing again—perhaps for Butt, who had worked so hard to get him to transfer to Harvard, perhaps for the national champion varsity eight he had been a part of during his junior year. But perhaps for himself, too, because Dave Stephens was made for rowing. And for winning.

“Winning races is one of the top ten things I like to do,” Stephens says. “Maybe top two.”

Since coming to Harvard, Stephens has lost just twice—first to Navy in a 2003 dual race, and then at the 2003 Eastern Sprints. The current six-seat in the varsity eight, he was injured for the boat’s sole loss to Georgetown this year. He has winning down pat, although the back injury leaves his post-college rowing career in question. Stephens remains hopeful about a chance at the Canadian Olympic team in 2008, but the graduating senior has the 2005 IRAs ahead and a job secured at Orion Securities, an investment firm in Toronto.

“I’ll probably start working, and then who knows what will happen between now and 2008,” Stephens says. “And if IRAs is my last race and we win, it will be a good ending to my career. But hopefully it won’t be.”

For a man who loves to win—and then actually does so nearly every time he sits on an erg or ties into his foot stretchers—the end is unimaginable, especially in the international rowing community.

“What British lightweight rowing would do to have a guy like Dave Stephens,” Downing says, “they would pay a lot of money.”

Stephens is set, nonetheless, on returning to Canada after graduation to begin his job. He will once again put rowing on the back burner.

But according to Schroeder, Orion Securities should suit Stephens just fine.

“We spend our spare time speculating in the Kazakhstani gold market,” Schroeder says. “We have a good time doing that.”

Good times abound for Stephens and the No. 1 Harvard lightweight crew, which enters as the solid favorite in this weekend’s race against Princeton and Yale. The Crimson will likely take its No. 1 ranking into the Eastern Sprints and IRA national championships, where it has won in every odd-numbered year since 1991.

And winning, at least for these last few weeks of the 2005 season, is close to No. 1 on Dave Stephens’ list of favorite things to do.

—Staff writer Aidan E. Tait can be reached at atait@fas.harvard.edu.