At the 37th racing of the Head of the Charles, both Harvard and Radcliffe crews found success among the crowds of spectators and the challenge of international competition.

The Harvard heavyweight boat led the way with its third place finish yesterday in the Championship Eight.

“I thought it was a pretty strong race,” captain Wayne Pommen said. “[Senior] Jim Omartian steered an excellent course. There was a lot of weird wind. There was tailwind in some places, headwinds and crosswinds in some places. We did really well in the powerhouse stretch, where there was a really good tailwind—we were really flying. There was a headwind at the last turn, so we really had to fight to get to the finish line.”

The U.S. national team, rowing under USRowing, took the title with a winning time of 14:09.460, while Deutscher Ruderverband, the German national team, took second with 14:21.179. The Crimson won the collegiate portion of the competition with a time of 14:28.240, also beating out international opponents.

“[Wisconsin] started kind-of close, but we moved up well on them,” senior Hugo Mallinson said. “We also pulled well away from Brown. It was a really good race on the whole and we were rowing in open water during most of the time, not really worrying about other crews.”

The second Harvard heavyweight boat, under the name of the Charles River Rowing Association and comprised of the sophomores who won the Temple Cup at Henley last year, finished in fifteenth place with a time of 14:56.289.

Harvard had further success in the Youth Eight event on Sunday, where the Crimson freshmen boat took first place for the fourth straight year with a time of 14:58.700. Northeastern’s time of 15:15.710 was the closest time, as the Huskies took second.

The Crimson continued its sweep of success with a win in the Club Eight event on Saturday. The first of Harvard’s two boats in the event took the crown with a time of 15:18.278 while the second boat, under Charles River Rowing Association, placed fourteenth with 15:59.169.

“Club eight is a crapshoot because the strength of crews vary from year to year,” senior Graham O’Donoghue said. “At points, it wasn’t as clean as we would have wanted, but we rowed really aggressively up the entire course.”

Once it finally broke out of Notre Dame’s wash and got a hold on moving under the bridges, the Crimson passed two boats in its row to victory.

“Our coxswain, Emily Murphy, did a fantastic job,” O’Donoghue said.

“Our freshman eight won the Youth Eight, one boat won the Club Eight, and we won the Collegiate Eight,” Pommen said. “It was our best performance in recent memory.”

The Harvard lightweights came away satisfied, though with less success in the Lightweight Eight event. The first lightweight boat, under Charles River Rowing Association, finished in seventh with 15:13.93 while the second boat finished in 20th place out of 20 boats in 16:58.43 after receiving a one-minute penalty.

“We were pretty satisfied with our first 3 minutes,” co-captain Joe Finelli said. “We took the start out harder than we would normally. In the past few years, we’ve dropped distance in the past 3/4 of a mile so we made it a goal not to drop that distance. We accomplished our goal, but we paid for it later.”

The Crimson’s fast start put the boat far ahead of Dartmouth and within sight of Navy. But Harvard wasn’t able to hold onto the speed of its fast start and never caught the Mishipmen.