The King certainly didn’t slow the lightweights. In the Grand Final, Harvard took the crown with a time of 5:46.65 over Yale’s 5:47.52. But whether it was the actual design of the boat or the comfort of the rowers that gave the Crimson the extra push is indeterminable.

“The saying is that it’s the horses, not the chariot,” Crick said. “Harvard had been rowing incredibly well as it was, and the boat didn’t get in their way.”

“Who’s to say that one boat is better than another?” Butt mused. “To say that it’s better by two seconds is to say that it’s better by 1/100 second per stroke. And how can you determine 1/100 per stroke? The oarsmen felt comfortable in the King and that’s why we used it.”

Though Elite is a relatively new boat company, the designs it uses date back decades, to the wooden creations of King.

Originally from Australia, King served as a boatman for Harvard in the ’70s. He became an expert in slender hull theory and an engineer with wooden boat designs that are still used today.

“The King is a highly evolved design,” Crick said. “Graeme King has been building wooden boats since 1965. We rowed in wooden Kings in the ’80s.”

Crick’s collegiate rowing career began as a coxswain for the Harvard heavyweights in 1984, under current Coach Harry Parker, who just completed his 39th season of reign.