Racers Flock to Boathouse Row for Head of the Schuylkill
Known as ‘America’s favorite regatta’ by Philadelphia natives, the 54th Head of the Schuylkill is set to run from Saturday and Sunday, October 26-27, 2024.
“It’s a lot of fun and it’s one of my favorite head races because it’s a local one,” said Undine Barge Club head coach Joe Quaid. “It’s not the same course we row day in and day out. In the last 20 years the traffic pattern has been flipped because they don’t want boats crossing the course to get to the far side of the river. You go up the east side of the river. The biggest difference is the Columbia Ave. Bridge is the major turn in the river and normally you can get really close to the wall but when they flip the course the buoys around that turn are almost in the middle of the river so it’s much different. It pushes everybody out and it evens the field from just the locals hugging the wall.”
The Redgrave Challenge, honoring British rower and five-time Olympic gold medalist Sir Steven Redgrave takes place over the course of the day on Saturday. The Challenge involves racing between both lightweight and heavyweight collegiate and open men and women. Adaptive/Para events, alumni events, parent/child/sibling events and half course events are all included in Saturday’s lineup. Sunday racing will feature high school, open, championship, mixed masters and veteran Events.
HOSR dates back to the 1970s when members of the University Barge Club proposed the idea of a head race style course. In the regatta’s inaugural year only 12 women were entered. Fast forward to 2013 and the event saw over 3,200 women racing down the course. Today the event hosts more than 8,000 athletes from over 260 clubs, high schools and colleges with 20,000 to 30,000 spectators anticipated.
“This year we have some really good masters,” Quaid noted about Undine’s HOSR 2024 entries. “The 50-59 year old age group are competitive as well as the younger athletes in the champ singles, doubles, and quads. It’s a mixed bag. Some people row a few days a week and others row pretty hard and are consistently training.”
Undine, a core member of the clubs along Boathouse Row, was founded in 1856 and will be joined at this year’s Head of the Schuylkill by storied crews along with programs who have just emerged on the rowing scene in a competitive 2.5-mile race down the Schuylkill.
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