“Three of the Cantabs had rowed at Harvard,” McDaniel said. “Their captain had been our captain in 2002 and had made some comments early that a good boat race crew was better then a good college crew. We wanted to prove him wrong, and I think we did.”

Exploiting the Crimson’s year-long weakness, Cambridge seized the lead off the start. But Harvard, true to form, regained the lead before building a one length lead by the midway point despite several attempted moves by its opponents and a scaled-back effort.

"Twice Cambridge seemed to work extremely hard to take back a seat or two," Sagalowsky said. "These were very exhausting and unsuccessful moves for them, however, and our lead was never threatened."

The Crimson elevated its base cadence in the race’s final strokes but never fully sprinted. The tactic was more than sufficient in holding off the older Cambridge crew while still conserving energy for the following day’s final.

“They had very strong moves, and we had to work hard to counter these,” McDaniel said. “But it worked. And with 30 strokes to go, we knew we had won.”

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