By Richard Phillips
Virtual, adj. Being such in power, force, or effect, though not actually or expressly such.
Regatta, n. A boat race, as of rowboats, yachts, or other vessels
Virtual Regatta, n. 1. The best testament to a sport that has survived tragedies before, and will survive this one, too. 2. A chance to avenge a 30-year-old loss, one that perhaps I should have gotten over a long time ago.
2020 is no year to bring together thousands of people for an athletic event. We are part of a world that is suffering breathtaking tragedy. Coming together would only serve to increase the risk of expanding that tragedy. And we are part of a nation that seems that it is finally, painfully, addressing its own injustices, like systemic racism and income inequality. In a time like this, rowing may seem almost inappropriate. Racing may seem a lark.
But look more closely. March 15 was the date of my last row out of my beloved University Barge Club. As far as I know it was the date of the last row for anyone out of any club on Boathouse Row. After that row, I racked the boat and sat in the clubhouse, and it occurred to me that I had no idea when I might be back. I took some time to examine the photos, the plaques, the trophies, and for the first time really looked at the dates.
As our present day world was about to change dramatically, I was soaking in the fact that the world has changed dramatically before, and our forebears have rowed through everything. While world wars raged, and our very existence as a nation was uncertain, they rowed. Through a depression, countless recessions, through pandemics and social upheavals, they rowed. And that is not to mention rowing through all of the triumphs and tragedies that doubtless were happening in their personal lives. I imagined as I looked at those young men (and, sadly, if you look back not terribly far, they were indeed all men) that they were rowing not because times were always good, but because things were sometimes tough. They rowed consistently in an inconsistent world. I imagined that they took pleasure in the sheer and simple beauty of moving a boat, not because nothing troubling was happening, but because so much that was happening was deeply troubling.
It is our turn, now. This is our moment, as individuals and as a community. Our times are changing, and as rowers we will adapt and find new sources of strength. We cannot rightly say we look forward to getting back to normal, because the normalcy of March 15, 2020 is not coming back. We cannot wish it back and we should not. Time has an arrow, and fighting it is wasted energy. When we do return to live racing, the world will be a different place, and we may or may not see our role in it the same way. We may have a new perspective on the diversity challenges that we face as a sport. We may see a different obligation to our community than we have before. We may have new rules and practices to keep people safe. We will certainly have changed, as individuals and as a community.
So what about this virtual thing, then? I will confess that when I heard that our beloved autumn celebration would be virtual, I didn’t buy it. Racing is about seeing your opponents. It is about feeling their presence next to you, and doing everything in your power to crush their spirit (in a friendly way, of course), as they do everything in their power to crush yours. It is about coxswains screaming at you as you try to finish an overtake, just in time to clear that bridge abutment. It is about eyeing up your competitors at the starting line. It is about yelling across the water to wish them good luck, and it is about not really meaning it. At all. How in the world can you do all those wonderful things virtually?
And then it came to me. And this whole virtual thing finally made sense.
So let’s get one thing straight right away. Because to understand the wonder and importance of the fact that the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta is going to be virtual this year, you really need to fully grasp and digest this one undisputed—indeed indisputable—fact. And that fact, boiled down to a simple declarative sentence, is this:
In the spring of 1989, The Yale Freshman Heavyweight 8 really, seriously, very much should have won the Yale-Harvard boat race.
You can go back and read that again if you need to. Internalize it. It may seem unrelated to this regatta, but trust me. It is critical to all that follows. And we don’t have to get in to WHY it’s true, but trust me. It is SO true. Indeed, the fact that the intrepid (and really quite dashing) Yale Freshman Heavyweight 8 lost that race is still, to my knowledge, the single worst miscarriage of justice to befall competitive sports. Ever. And anyone who disagrees simply doesn’t understand rowing. Either that or they just hate America. And freedom. And democracy.
Anyway, you get my point. We should have won. And yes, it still bothers me.
And here is the next fact you need to know to understand the HOSR’s new format this year. It’s virtual-ness, if you will. That second fact is this.
Rowers are, really, at their essence, a bunch of head cases who cannot let go of a loss, and love to relive a victory. They will happily obsess about both for years and years after the actual fact.
I mean, who better than a bunch of people who spend countless hours making micrometer adjustments to a motion they have done hundreds of thousands of times, in order to MAYBE find a half a second of speed over a two thousand meter course, to also obsess about a race that took place four years before email.
I know I can’t go back and actually recreate that race. So I do the only thing I can. I re-race it. Virtually. In my obsessive little rower head. Day in. Day out. On the erg. During practice pieces on the water. While warming up for a race. Hell, I do it in the shower and sometimes on the commute to work. (By the way, every time we have a Yale-Harvard re-race, justice prevails and Yale wins. But you knew that.).
And now you can admit it, too. We are all always rowing—and racing—virtually. Always.
I would argue, in fact, that we do this better than athletes in any other sport. Just look at the numbers. We train for hours upon hours, twelve months a year, year in year out. I stopped doing the math a long time ago, but it looks something like this. Let’s say you train five days a week, one hour a day, twelve months a year. That is about 240 hours per year. That’s a lot. And we actually compete in fantastically short races! A master’s race is about 3 minutes long. The really, really long races, the marathons of rowing, the head races, are all of twenty minutes long. Twenty minutes! Wooohoooo! I should bring a book. Maybe I could finally finish Sapiens. Anyway if one were to race five sprints, and let’s say two head races, that is a grand total of 55 minutes of racing.
With such short races, how do you get through all those hours of training?
The answer is the little secret we have all finally confessed. The one thing we ALL do, but don’t talk about that much. This dirty little secret of rowing is that every time we get on that erg or in the boat, whether it is on a frigid predawn February morning, or on a beautiful Fall evening, we call up some imaginary race. We relive some moment, avenge some loss, triumph over some foe who is not really there. We create and experience an entire world, a reality, in our head. The truth is, we never practice. Ever. We race every day. Virtually.
I look forward to this year’s virtual regatta. I look forward to beating Harvard again. And I can’t tell you how much I look forward to seeing you all in person next year. I assure you I will wish all of you actual, in-person rowers good luck at the start, and I assure you I will not really mean it.
Richard Phillips is a rower, writer, and proud member of University Barge Club. He is a former counsel for the Department of Justice and Senate Judiciary Committee, and former CEO of a global logistics company. He is a proud, recent finisher of Sapiens.
Content from the 2020 HOSR Program Book to be published October 18, 2020.