Rowing Photos

Click links to see full-size photos.

William and Mary Men's Varsity 1999.
#10 in US Div. III - first-ever top ten finish by a W&M men's crew.

William and Mary Men's Second Varsity 1999.
Mid-Atlantic Champions.
See also some postcard-quality photos of a morning practice in April 1999.

William and Mary Women's Varsity Eight 1998.
#8 in US Div. III - first-ever top ten finish by a W&M women's crew.

William and Mary Men's Varsity Eight 1998.

William and Mary Men 1997.
Heavyweight Eight.
Lightweight Eight.
Varsity Four.

Wolfson College Women's First Eight 1996:
Displaying the infamous scarlet lycra kit I designed (except for Tim, who has chosen a green fleece for some reason - guess he didn't like my scarlet splashtop design).

Wolfson College Women's First Eight 1995:
Off the start. Look out: average weight of 72 kg bearing down.
Racing for a bump.
With some pots.

Wolfson College Women's First Eight 1994:
The first Wolfson crew I ever coached. I had returned from Spain at the end of April and took over coaching five weeks before Summer Eights. Notice the signs of an old photo: the racing kit is blue and the crew is still using macon blades.

Wolfson College Men's Schools Eight 1995:
(A "Schools" Eight is basically an Old Boys crew thrown together as a scratch entry in Oxford's Eights Week. That's me in the two seat.)

Oxford University Men's Lightweight Blue Boat 1996:
Portrait with Boat Race Trophy.
Beating Cambridge.

Wadham College Men 1996:
First Division Blades-winning crew portrait from Torpids.
First Eight racing in Summer Eights.

Corpus Christi College Men's First Eight 1996:
About to bump St. Anne's. This one turned ugly when St. Anne's conceded late.

St. Antony's College Men's First Eight 1996:
The fastest and most successful crew in the history of the boat club.

Lady Margaret Hall Women's Second Eight 1994.

Lady Margaret Hall Women's Schools Eight 1994.

Lady Margaret Hall Women's First Eight 1993:
The smallest crew I've ever coached (average weight 55 kg).

A photo of me taken before the 1996 Oxford/Cambridge Lightweight Boat Race. A rare photo of me without sunglasses and wearing a Beefeater splashtop (my only dark blue jacket, as it happens).

Sometimes when surfing the Web it is possible to find that someone else randomly has a picture of you on their site. I found this photo of the Nottinghamshire County Rowing Association crew at the 1990 Head of the Charles. We finished second in the Championship Eights event to the US Heavyweights from Penn AC.

You also never know when you are going to end up on a postcard. This one features the Wolfson College women - a scratch crew I assembled to race as the First Torpid in February 1996 - about to score a triple-over-bump on a scared-looking St. Anne's crew. Those who know the Isis will recognize that this negative was printed backwards, too. Those women in the crew may not realize it since I had several of them do the race rowing on their opposite sides. The dreaming spires obscure some of our crew, and the postcard editors cut off the cox. Karen Sidwell, that year's captain and stroking the crew in this photo, sent me this in the mail.

Some photos from my archives:

My most memorable race: Freshman year in college, my bowman was angry with his girlfriend because she forgot to bring her telephoto lens to Sprints. However, as it turned out, had she been using the telephoto she never would have been able to get this margin shot. In this photo we are on our way to winning the championship by an amazing 2.5 lengths. Top-seeded Princeton (wearing white), which had beaten us soundly by one length only two weeks before, is in second place.
My best-coxed race: Senior year, once again seeded second, I made some risky additions to the race plan, and I broke a general rule by calling our moves early from the lead, including effectively starting our sprint with 1100 meters to go. However, we kept upping the ante and Princeton finally folded. The only question was whether my crew would make it to the finish line before passing out. We did, barely. Two Red Cross launches came over to monitor us as we sat dead on the finish. By the next day, several people from the opposing crews were asking me how my crew was - rumor had spread that several of my crew had ended up in the hospital. I put an end to those rumors before we turned into the next "Japanese Crew Legend." Unfortunately, no audio exists for this race - an umpire's launch waked us during our warm-up and we had to race with 1.5 inches of water in the bottom of the boat. The tape recorder got waterlogged and shorted.
My crew throwing me into Lake Quinsigamond after I won the fourth of my EARC titles. Maybe someday I will have the opportunity to take the swim in Quinsig again.
The only front-view photo I have of myself coxing. This was taken at my first appearance at Henley Royal Regatta. This was also the most uncomfortable coxswain seat I've ever been in (notice, for one, the gloves I'm wearing to keep the rudder wire from amputating my thumbs).
The infamous 1992 London School of Economics First Eight. We shocked everyone, and especially ourselves, with our victory. I am the rather diminutive 6-man.

From some other servers around the Web, photos of rivers I have spent lots of time on and boathouses I have spent lots of time in:

The Charles River, looking downstream from Harvard University's Newell Boathouse.
Weld Boathouse (and another view), home of North House Crew (among other notable programs, including the Harvard Sculling Club where I learned to scull).
Well downstream of Newell and Weld is the Charles River Basin.
OUBC Boathouse (obviously an old photo as University College, the owner, did not maintain it properly), home of Wolfson College BC. This boathouse burned down on the night of September 24th, 1999.
Saltonstall Boathouse at Phillips Exeter Academy. Actually, the old Saltonstall Boathouse I rowed out of no longer exists - it was about to fall into the swamp, so it was sadly torn down. The new boathouse pictured here has been built set back from the river on firm ground. The old boathouse was beautiful: traditional shingled exterior, mahogony interior. The new boathouse is larger and more practical, but still needs to weather a bit to get the character of the old one. The view from the boathouse lounge over the Squamscott River hasn't changed, though.

And, finally, a really cool animated rower from the Netherlands.

Back to Charles Ehrlich's Homepage.