Two seat Mike Cominsky said it best yesterday after the Harvard lights lost to Yale by six seconds at Derby, Conn.: "We don't lose too often. You remember the times that you do."

For the Crimson, it will be a tough day to forget, especially next Sunday when it gets a rematch with Yale at the Eastern Sprints. Yesterday, the two powers of this season flexed their muscles at each other and Yale came away looking like Mr. Universe.

All season the monster that is Yale had shadowed the Crimson with reports of amazing margins of victories--16 seconds over Penn, for instance. Everyone pointed to yesterday's Goldthwait Cup, with Princeton rounding out the fleet, as the showdown for number one.

Yale is every bit as good in the water as they are in the box scores and it beat a Harvard crew which rowed its usual gung ho race, but even more so. That is what will make the loss so hard to forget.

"We rowed, most of us, the hardest race we ever rowed," stroke Jeff Brown said after the race. Harvard tried to blow Yale out early, starting at a cadence of 42 strokes per minute and settling at a very high 37 for the duration of the race. But Yale did not go away. At the 800-meter mark, where the course curves. Harvard only held the four-seat edge which it had in the staggered start.

Yale, rowing on the inside of the turn, took a slight lead from Harvard and then pulled away in its sprint at 1500 meters. "I couldn't move my legs any faster than a 37 when it came time for a sprint," Brown said, "so it was a little bit of a turkey."

But Harvard just had nothing left to draw on. And coach Peter Raymond feels that may have been a "tactical error" on his part: "Yale is a slow-stroking crew and I think we overextended ourselves." He feels that Harvard can row as effectively at a lower cadence and save some power for the final sprint.

The J.V. was "a bright spot on the day," as captain and six seat Jeff Cooley said, rowing to a 12-second victory over Yale, with Princeton another six seconds back. Although the J.V. was behind in the staggered start, it rocketed to a one-length lead after just 500 meters and opened up its lead on the turn, with cox Alexandra Dixon steering an excellent course.

As seems to be the case every year, the J.V.s once again go into the sprints as heavy favorites. "We've met the enemy and he is us." Cooley said yesterday, explaining that it is up to Harvard to determine the margin of victory.

As for the varsity, yesterday's race will be fresh in the crew's mind come Sunday. "You have to lose sometime," Brown said. "But it hurts. And the more it hurts, the harder you row the next weekend."