In the last two years, the Yale Lightweights have completed a long amazing run of 56 victories (and that’s not counting the 2000 Temple Challenge Cup win at Henley and the 2000 Head of the Charles win) to just 2 losses (by a total combined time of 0.95 seconds) . Yale’s bid to win a second straight IRA Lightweight National Championship fell just 0.8 seconds short to archrival Harvard in another classic lightweight battle on the Cooper River. The IRN has it wrong: that wasn’t an “improbable” win by Harvard (they weren’t exactly slow at the HYP and the Sprints); it was a thrilling race all the way down the course. Harvard made a bid and threw it out there early, and Yale came back from open water down with 500 to go to close to within a deck length at the finish in a near repeat of the 2000 IRA. Sure, we wanted to win this year too, but we wouldn’t trade our season for anyone’s. Congratulations to the 2001 National Champions from the 2001 EARC Sprints champions!