Head of the Charles looking to continue rowing’s growth as a sport for all ages

The variation is fast, intense, televises well, and will make its Olympic debut in Los Angeles two summers from now. Rowing, a discipline whose competitors go backward while sitting down, has become cool.

The hub of the sport’s evolution as a spectator attraction is Boston, where this weekend’s Head Of The Charles Regatta is entering its seventh decade as America’s premier fall rowing festival.

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“I don’t know that there’s any kind of atmosphere like that in the world,” said University of Washington men’s coach Mike Callahan, whose Huskies are an annual contender for the championship eights crown. “Just being part of the center of rowing in the autumn. Our oarsmen know they’re coming to something special.”

What began as a one-day event for college and club rowers to add some excitement to their training routine before heading indoors now is the planet’s largest three-day regatta with nearly 12,000 athletes from 32 countries racing in more than 70 events.

But to attract more non-rowing spectators to the Boston and Cambridge shores the organizers recently emphasized making the Head a welcoming celebration of both the sport and the season.

“It’s an invitation to bring people out and come to the river,” said Tori Stevens, the regatta’s chief executive whose mission has been to make the event “more fun, more approachable, more engaging.”

Last year, officials expanded the food offerings, added live music, and created a sport community zone for families.

“People loved the experience,” said Stevens, who reckoned attendance for the weekend was nearly 375,000, up 14 percent from 2024. “For so many of them who came to Boston for the first time to be able to get some chowder or a lobster roll …”

Spectators also were afforded a better idea of what they’re watching on the water. There’s an improved regatta app, more viewing screens on the shores, tracking technology, in-boat livestreaming, and podcasts with interviews of athletes.

Despite the significant costs for boathouses, shells, oars, and launches the sport has been riding a boom for several decades across all age groups.

At this year’s Head more than 20 scullers will be 85 or older and an octogenarian women’s eight will make its debut. And a dozen events accommodate soaring youth interest.

“The Boys in the Boat”, the book and film about the Washington crew that won gold at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, captured the country’s imagination three years ago.

“I can’t tell you how many airplanes I’ve been on where I say I work for the University of Washington and someone says, ‘Hey, Boys in the Boat,’ ” Callahan said. “It’s a household brand now.”

With the LA Games on the horizon the recent renaissance of the US national team also will boost interest from the sport’s newer followers.

At the August world championships in Amsterdam the Americans turned in their best performance since 1993, claiming medals in five Olympic events, including golds in the men’s and women’s fours, and reaching the finals in eight of 12 races.

“The system is working, we’re doing well,” said Josy Verdonkschot, the former Dutch coach who serves as US Rowing’s chief high performance officer. “I’m convinced that we’re on the right road.”

The US eights will be showing the flag again at the Head on Sunday with the women going after their third crown in four years and the men bidding to reclaim theirs.

Their appearance on the river is part of the buildup to the Games where the American women will be gunning for their first gold medal since 2016 and the men their first since 2004.

This time, though, they’ll be racing over 1,500 meters instead of 2,000, which has been the standard Olympic distance since 1912.

When the Games last were held in LA in 1984 the venue was Lake Casitas, a reservoir in Ojai, more than 80 miles to the north.

But since organizers didn’t want to build a satellite village this time for more than 500 athletes they settled on the closer Long Beach Marine Stadium course which is 500 meters shorter due to a bridge across the channel.

At last weekend’s Long Beach invitational, meant to be a competitive introduction to the new distance, US scullers Sam Melvin and Grace Joyce, both of whom will be contenders in the Head’s championship singles events on Saturday, won races against international rivals.

The 1,500-meter format essentially turns the race into a breathless sprint, which suits the International Olympic Committee’s emphasis on making sports more attractive to viewers, especially younger ones, who want more action jammed into less time.

Lacrosse and cricket, back on the Olympic program for the first time in more than a century, have been condensed and simplified to suit modern audiences, who also presumably won’t mind faster, more frenzied rowing races with possible photo finishes.

The beach sprints, head-to-head dash-and-splash duels that take less than four minutes, may strike traditionalists as a sandy sideshow but there’s an alluring novelty to it. “Beach sprints is a ton of fun,” said Brendan Mulvey, the Head’s race director. “It’s very engaging.”

Just because a sport is designed to go backward doesn’t mean it can’t go forward. If a random passerby on a Carson Beach walk can be entranced by a run-row-run diversion in the middle of the summer then rowing has become cool indeed.

From the source John Powers can be reached at [email protected].