In 1983 Andy Sudduth ’85—one of Parker’s former rowers—also found success at the Head of the Charles when he won the championship singles race. Sudduth, who died in 2006, went on to win the single’s race in five consecutive Regattas while serving as a computer programmer at Harvard.

“It stands out, there’s no question about that,” Parker says. “[Sudduth] was an extraordinary athlete and oarsman.... He’s certainly the best sculler we’ve ever had.”

As Harvard racers continued to win—the Crimson took the championship doubles race in 1984—the Regatta continued to expand. By 1988, it had grown to include 850 boats which raced during a day that now lasted eight hours—more than twice its original length.

“It got to the point where after about 20 years the [Metropolitian District Commission] was going to charge us something outrageous to run it because it was attracting such crowds,” MacMahon says. “So we did everything we could to hold the crowds down. We put the wrong date in the Globe, but it didn't work.”

In the final Regatta of the decade, history was made again when the the 1964 U.S. Olympic men’s eight celebrated the anniversary of its Tokyo gold medal by taking on the 1968 USSR Olympic squad, which came from Lithuania to challenge the Americans.

“We all began to recognize that this was a terrific event and was attracting rowers from all over the country and overseas,” Parker says. “It was a true national celebration of rowing as a sport, and it began to attract national attention.”

THE CRACKDOWN

As interest in the Regatta continued to grow, officials placed a greater focus on those attending it.

During these years, the event had come to have an increasingly festive feel for spectators, who would heavily imbibe champagne and drink from beer kegs and buckets of Bloody Marys. (The Crimson estimated there were 44,000 consumed of the latter in 1985.) In 1987, former Northeastern coach Buzz Congram commented that the race was attended by “drunken stumblebums” who made the event “ugly [and] unruly.” Former BU coach Joe Falco added that the Regatta was “getting out of hand...[with] more people getting drunk than watching the races.”

Such activity led to a crackdown by the Metropolitan District Commission, making 1987 “the first (allegedly) rowdiness-free Head of the Charles Regatta weekend,” according to The Crimson.

“[The changes came] all of a sudden,” Parker says. “The MDC just suddenly took a ban on alcohol. Came around and confiscated it without much notice ahead of time.”

According to a 1987 Crimson piece, Harvard administrators also “decided to exercise unprecedented authority over the Harvard community and the banks of the Charles in an attempt to curtail the craziness that has plagued the Heads of the past.”

Outsider access was strictly limited in all Houses, and parties were banned in some. The MDC assigned 300 police officers to the Regatta and threatened to cancel the event in the future if behavior did not change.

The security crackdown infuriated the student body.

“The only thing [this] will accomplish is the suffocation of Harvard’s none-too-healthy social life,” wrote The Crimson in one 1987 editorial.