­Within a half-decade, the Regatta had become the largest in the Western Hemisphere.

“Even in the ’60s it grew quite quickly,” Parker says. “Everybody was surprised, I think the organizers in particular. They made no arrangements for visiting crews.... It was actually quite a burden on the boathouses along the river, Newell in particular. We ended up many of those years with half of the entrants boating in our boathouse. It was a major headache.”

Yet that problem—which Parker says continued into the ’80s—did little to slow the Head’s rapid expansion. In 1973, over 30,000 people showed up to watch the defending national champion Radcliffe eights and the men’s championship four lead the Crimson to another Revere Trophy. The following year’s race featured a then-record 2,530 rowers, and the thousands in attendance—bundled in blankets and consuming rum and fried chicken—were able to watch the reigning World Champion U.S. men’s eight, featuring four Harvard oarsmen, row by. In 1976, Radcliffe won the championship fours race for the second time.

By the decade’s end, the Head was already regarded as “the rowing world’s fall classic” and “the rowing Mecca of the world,” featuring upwards of 3,200 rowers and 720 shells as crowds of 60,000 took in the action.

And thanks to a propitious rule change, Parker was even able to compete at the event himself.

“The international body’s rules declared that paid coaches could not race as amateurs,” Parker explains. “But then in 1973 we changed that rule because we had a coach from Columbia who had stopped coaching and then wanted to compete again.... I remember sitting at that meeting when the vote was taken and thinking, ‘Hey, that means I can compete in the Head of the Charles.’”

That was something Parker would do in the majority of Heads from that point forward.

VICTORY ALL-AROUND

The 1980 Regatta was among the most highly anticipated to date, as it featured a matchup between the West German and American Olympic men’s eight boats—a race that was expected to take place in Moscow the previous summer but did not due to the American boycott.

The United States Olympic Committee provided transportation and living expenses for the racers, who included former Harvard captain Charlie Altekruse ’80. To compete for the Americans, Altekruse returned for the weekend from Germany, where he was studying abroad. Led by Altekruse, the United States took third place in the featured event, finishing behind Navy and West Germany.

“A couple of guys had ballooned up 20, 30 pounds, so we were not in racing form, that’s for sure,” Altekruse recalls. “[But] we had enough residual fitness to get down the course in a reasonable amount of time.”

In 1981, despite concerns over the cleanliness of the Charles, the Regatta had become so popular that organizers had to turn away 300 applicants from spots in the 18 events. The following year, attendance broke the 100,000 mark, and by the middle of the decade, the race had grown to include 3,500 competitors.

“We've had to limit its size because the river wasn't getting any wider,” MacMahon says. “The first year we had a system that limited entries I didn't get in...so it's a system that's incredibly fair.”

Also in 1981, Parker won the veterans’ division race for the first—and to date only—time.

“It was fun because I had been racing against a bunch of those guys in the championship singles over the years,” Parker says. “Obviously we weren’t finishing very high up, with all the young guys, [until] we all moved into the veterans’ division.”