Poughkeepsie Regatta

The Poughkeepsie Regatta was the annual championship regatta of the U.S. Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) when it was held in Poughkeepsie, New York from 1895 to 1949.

The IRA was established by Cornell, Columbia, and Pennsylvania in 1891, the third year of their race on the Thames River in New London, Connecticut. There Harvard and Yale, from 1878, had established and maintained "The Race" as an exclusive head-to-head contest. The newly formed IRA "left New London in frustration and disgust" next year and selected a permanent site for its own annual regatta in June 1895.

The very first IRA race was held in June 1895, on the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie, with one Varsity Eight team from Cornell, Columbia and Pennsylvania competing. Cornell won with a time of 21:25.0. The course was a straight four miles, wide enough for 20 boats. In 1899 there were 48 cars in the observation train that slowly followed the race as "a moving grandstand" (on the heights above the river). People soon named the championship regatta after its permanent location and the name Poughkeepsie Regatta was used on the cover of the official program from 1922.

In the early years the Eastern schools dominated the race. Typically only a four-mile Varsity Eight race was held, but if there were enough teams entered, there was also a two-mile Freshman Eight race, and occasionally a Varsity Four race. Eventually, this evolved into a format that included an annual two-mile Freshman Eight race, followed by a three-mile Junior Varsity Eight race, and finally the four-mile Varsity Eight race. In 1923 the University of Washington became the first Western crew team to win the Poughkeepsie Regatta. From that year on the Western schools that participated, namely the University of Washington, and the University of California, became a dominating factor. They consistently placed in the top three, and more often than not, they won. The University of Washington became the first and only school to sweep the Regatta two years in a row.

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