One Good Pull

DARTMOUTH'S HEAVYWEIGHT men's crew, now ranked first in the country, finished its best season ever last spring after taking home first-place finishes from the prestigious Eastern Sprints and the Intercollegiate Rowing Association's annual regatta (the I.R.A.s). The only crew to beat them: the same Harvard crew they thoroughly trounced earlier in the season at the Eastern Sprints.

At the I.R.A.s, Dartmouth came down to a photo-finish with Navy in the finals. The line judges eventually admitted they couldn't determine which boat had won and declared a dead heat. But Pennsylvania lodged a protest (they were "waked" by a passing motorboat) that forced the judges to declare a three-way tie among Penn, Navy, and Dartmouth.

"That decision was pretty gutless," said Eric Cesnik, a '94 lightweight."The Dartmouth rowers wanted to re-row the racethey knew they could have won it." But the Dartmouth eight got their chance. The Big Green put all boats but Harvard well behind them in the season finale, the Cincinnati Nationals. And die Great Eight

Armstrong then brought his rowers to the Henley Royal Regatta in England to test their mettle against world class competition. Making a bid for the Grand Challenge Cup (the premier event, usually reserved for Olympic and national teams), the Dartmouth boat was edged out by a group of Olympic hopefuls from Pennsylvania by half a boat length.

Some talk circulating in rowing circles attributed Dartmouth's new-found rowing success to an innovative oar design the Big Green tested out early on in the season. Dartmouth was the first school to try out sets of oars newly designed by the owners of Concept II.The blade is wider, stouter, and features a hanging flange on the very end that descends below the rest of the blade.

Every major competition the Dartmouth heavies faced featured boats wielding the same new, odd-looking devices. Dartmouth had an equipment advantage only in the very first races races that seldom affect the final standings.

Nonetheless, several schools called on the Intercollegiate Rowing Association to ban, or place a moratorium on, the new technology.By die end of the season, though, the new oar and Dartmouth were the winners.

The oar-armed heaviesupended the Ivies.