The French stumbled into fifth, 2.61 seconds behind the Crimson, with the British another 0.12 seconds behind.

“Beating the British and French Eights was a tremendous feeling,” Cameron Winklevoss said. “I’ve never been so happy coming in fourth in a race in my life.”

Harvard’s time of 2:51.31 over the final 1,000 meters was the fastest in the heat—0.31 seconds faster than USA1, more that 1.29 seconds faster than the rest of the field—and a welcome surprise, given the Crimson’s untested sprint.

“In college racing, we never really sprinted, just bumped it up to 37 [strokes per minute] for the last 20 strokes in our races this spring,” Tyler Winklevoss said. “In this race we found another gear, [and] there was no doubt in any of our minds that we had raced as hard as we possibly could.”

But, exhausted by two days of intense competition, Harvard could not summon a similar effort in the A Final, finishing in sixth place.

Again in last off the start, the Crimson struggled to maintain contact with the field, slowly fading as the race progressed. Less than three seconds behind the Canadians after 500 meters, Harvard fell more than six seconds over the next 1,500 meters, finishing more than nine seconds out of first.

But unlike the Crimson’s last loss—to Wisconsin at the 2002 Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges (EARC) Sprints—contentment, and not disappointment, was the overwhelming sentiment heading into this weekend’s Henley Royal Regatta.

“[I am] extremely satisfied,” Sagalowsky said. “It is my proudest achievement as a rower.”

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