Cal Sports Report

Cal Men Win Rowing National Championship With Dominant Performance

No. 1-ranked Bears top No. 2 Yale and former coach Steve Gladstone in the varsity eight Grand Finals, ending the Bulldogs' run of national titles
Jake Curtis|
Cal Men Win Rowing National Championship With Dominant Performance
Cal Men Win Rowing National Championship With Dominant Performance

The No. 1-ranked Cal varsity eight won its first men's national rowing championship since 2016 by beating No. 2 Yale and former Cal coach Steve Gladstone in the grand finals of the IRA nationals on Sunday morning in West Windsor, N.J.

The much anticipated finals pitted the Golden Bears and coach Scott Frandsen  against Yale and Bulldogs coach Steve Gladstone, who had been Cal's head coach for 20 years and won five national championship with the Bears. Frandsen was a star rower for Cal and Gladstone from 2000 to 2002 when the Bears won three straight national championships.

But the student knocked off his mentor and good friend on Sunday while ending Yale's stranglehold on the national title. Yale had won the past three national championships in which it participated.  It won in 2017, 2018 and 2019, but the IRA did not hold a national championship in 2020 (pandemic) and the Ivy League did not participate in intercollegiate sports in 2021 (health concerns from the pandemic).

It is the Bears' 18th Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) national title, but the first under fourth-year coach Frandsen.

Here is the finish:

Yale won both the second varsity eight and third varsity eight finals with Cal finishing second and fifth, respectively in those two finals. As a result Cal did not win the team title, which is based on total points.

However, rowers, rowing coaching and rowing officials always consider the winner of the varsity eight race as the national champion.

Cal grabbed the lead in the varsity eight grand finals in the first 500 meters and built the lead to nearly three seconds with 500 meters left in the 2000-meter race.  Cal coasted home more than two seconds ahead of second-place Yale, which constitutes a rather convincing victory.

The Bears' finished in a time of 5:44.239, which was 2.10 seconds ahead of Yale, which was clocked in 5:46.339. Cal was nearly five seconds ahead of third-place Brown, which was timed in 5:49.133.

Washington was fourth, Syracuse fifth and Harvard sixth in the six-boats final.

Members of the Cal varsity eight: Luca Vieira (cox), Iwan Hadfield (stroke), Elliott Kemp, Tim Roth, Ollie Maclean, Gennaro di Mauro, Angus Dawson, Frederik Breuer, Campbell Crouch (bow).

Here are the times of the varsity eight grand final:

Here is the video of all of Sunday's races, with the men's varsity eight grand final being the last race, starting about three hours and five minutes into the video. (The numbers the commentator is announcing are strokes per minute):

Cover photo by Lisa Worthy, KLC Fotos

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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