42nd Annual Head of the Schuylkill Regatta® Brings More than 6,500 Competitors in Over 1,400 Boats to Philadelphia This Weekend
Philadelphia, PA – October 25, 2012 – The 42nd Annual Head of the Schuylkill Regatta®, Philadelphia’s
largest and most inclusive regatta attracting more than 6,500 competitors in 1,430
boats, is this Saturday, October 27th and Sunday, October 28th
on Philadelphia’s historic home of rowing, the Schuylkill River.
Competitors
from 26 states (as well as the District of Columbia), and from four nations
(Canada, United Kingdom, Greece and Australia) are registered for this weekend’s
regatta.
Featured
this year will be current Olympians, as well as Olympians from the recent past,
including Esther Lofgren, Gold medal
winner in the women’s eight from the London Games, who will race her single in
the women’s open heavy singles at 9 a.m. on Saturday. Also on Saturday, Sarah Garner and Christine
Collins, Bronze medal winners in the 2000 Olympics, will compete in the
women’s open heavy doubles.
A
keystone event in the 2012 Philadelphia
Classic Regatta Series, the Head of
the Schuylkill Regatta is a 2.5 mile head race for high school, colleges,
open and masters’ rowers, as well as featuring adaptive and recreational
categories over both days. Races begin
on both days at 8 a.m. and continue to 4 p.m. each day. Admission
to view the Head of the Schuylkill
Regatta, on the banks of the Schuylkill River along Kelly Drive, is free of
charge.
The starting line for
this weekend's Head of the Schuylkill Regatta is above the
Strawberry Mansion Bridge, with the finish line above the "Viking"
statue on Boathouse Row. The Head of the Schuylkill Regatta is what is commonly referred to as a
"head" race: A rowing head race is one where competitors race
the clock over a course typically two to three miles long, compared to sprint
races of 1,000 to 2,000 meters. Head races are a format that began in England
The launching site for
out-of-town crews, as well as the Festival Site, including awards ceremonies,
vendors, exhibitors, artists, entertainment and food, is approximately one mile
North of Boathouse Row on Kelly Drive at the "Three Angels," the
popular name for the Carl Milles' sculpture "Playing Angels." Free
transportation will be provided to spectators this weekend, from Lloyd Hall on
Boathouse Row to the "Three Angels" statues, as well as to nearby
parking areas. Limited parking for cars is available nearby in Fairmount
Park.
Presenting sponsor of
the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta is NSM Insurance Group. Gold
Sponsors include the Greater Philadelphia
Tourism & Marketing Corp; Aleden Rowing; ARAMARK; East River Bank; and Exelon.
Silver Sponsors include: OarTec; Shimano Rowing Dynamics; Ace
Insurance; and Mariner Insurance. Bronze Sponsors include: Semanoff,
Ormsby, Greenberg & Torchia LLC; and ROTHMAN INSTITUTE.
Along with Lofgren, Megan Kalmoe and Hendrik
Rummel, 2012 Olympic medal winners, will appear on the medals stand to help
present Head of the Schuylkill Regatta
medals to first, second and third place winners in each race. They have
also agreed to sign autographs at the USRowing
booth (#23) in the Festival Tent.
The Festival Tent features vendors including:
Boathouse Sports, the Perfect Snaque,
PhotoBot, Henson, Wave One, Regatta Sport and Approach in addition to the Head
of the Schuylkill Regatta’s exclusive food vendor, Winnie's LeBus Manayunk.
NK is the official sponsor of this
weekend’s “DJ,” and will be the voice of the regatta in the Festival Tent.
For the first time, there will be a warm-up tent, sponsored by OarTec, with “ergs” for crews that would
rather warm up on land.
More than 250 volunteers, including members
from across Boathouse Row and the rowing community, as well as from
Philadelphia City Rowing, will begin working early Friday, October 25 until the
end of the day Sunday, October 28 to make Philadelphia's largest regatta a
success on and off the water.
The official Twitter feed of the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta is https://twitter.com/The_HoSR, and
results will be posted there with the hash tag #the_hosr. Results will also
appear on the Head of the Schuylkill
Regatta Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/HeadOfTheSchuylkill?fref=ts.
This weekend's Head
of the Schuylkill Regatta has its roots in 1971, when three members
of University Barge Club launched the idea for a new fall
race, transforming the 1,000 meter Graduate Sculls race into a head racing
format. The aim of 1960 Olympian Lyman Perry, Jay Pattison III, and the late
Raul Betancourt was to offer rowers of all ages congenial autumn
competition. At a time when only elite, college and junior athletes
competed in "head" or distance races, the newly-established Head
of the Schuylkill Regatta emphasized graduate oarsmen and opened racing to
newly emerging masters' and women's teams. In time, the Head of the
Schuylkill Regatta became the world's largest one-day rowing
competition, but its popularity soon exceeded the river's capacity, so in 2008
the format was changed to a two-day event. Additional information about the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta is
available at http://www.hosr.org.
With three of the
largest regattas in the Mid-Atlantic region on the schedule, as well as two of
the nation's oldest regattas, the Philadelphia Classic Regatta Series connects
the rowing competitors of today to the historic home of the international
rowing elite. It is built upon a tradition that launched November 12, 1835
with the first organized regatta on the Schuylkill
(a full eight years before the start of the rowing program at
Harvard). Over 175 years later, the Schuylkill River
Media Contacts:
Jim DeLorenzo, Jim
DeLorenzo Public Relations, 215-266-5943, jim@jhdenterprises.com
Ellen Carver, Head of
the Schuylkill Regatta,
215-280-0483, Ncarver528@aol.com