But that squad hadn’t benefited from the smooth sailing early on that the first boat enjoyed.

Rather, the second eight found itself at the back of the pack as its race began to take on its early form.

“Off the starting line, Princeton jumped on us, as well as Cornell and Wisco,” sophomore coxswain Kit Randolph said. “We were surprised by that, especially Princeton.”

As the race neared the 1400-meter mark, the order of the field remained unchanged, with Princeton ahead of Cornell and Wisconsin and the Crimson not far behind.

But with only 600 meters remaining, Harvard made its move.

“Our coxswain made the call around 600 [meters] to get Wisco, and once we locked onto them we thought it was possible to move onto Princeton,” captain Mike Skey said. “It was everyone gearing up and ready to go. Once everyone thought it was possible, everyone went for it.”

Despite the distance remaining and the difficult weather conditions, the Crimson slowly began to erase the Tigers’ open-water lead.

“We row pretty well in the headwind,” Skey said. “I like to think of the Harvard crews as having the headwind be our forte. That’s what we train in in the [Charles River] basin.”

With 500 meters to go, that training was certainly paying off. Though not yet in the lead, the Crimson was on the verge of making the once-daunting gap disappear entirely.“The remarkable thing is that everyone knew we could,” Skey said. “Everyone knew that we were the faster crew, and that the result coming into the last 500 wasn’t the way it should be. I’m proud of the guys in my boat that everyone dug down and did it and knew they could. It made the victory that much sweeter.”

The common mind set was one of the few things guaranteed to be in harmony, as the rowers had not shared much practice time because of injuries—including heart surgery for junior Jonathan Lehe less than a month ago.

Rowing at 40 strokes per minute, the Crimson boat was primarily running on fumes as it neared the finish line, but exhaustion was not going to stop the momentum swing.

“You’re so tired at that point,” Skey said. “It’s basically adrenaline. Your mental capacity comes in as a factor.”

Adrenaline proved to be enough.

Coming all the way back from an open-water deficit, Harvard outdistanced Princeton by a boat length and a half, finishing in 6:22.4—4.1 seconds ahead of the Tigers.

Rounding out the races factoring into the Rowe Cup, the first freshman boat took second, falling to Princeton in 6:20.32—6.21 seconds off the pace.

The Harvard heavyweights return to the water on May 28, when the Crimson competes for the national title at the IRA Championships in Camden, N.J. for the first time in more than a decade.

—Staff writer Timothy J. McGinn can be reached at mcginn@fas.harvard.edu.