Harvard-Yale Boat Race

The Yale-Harvard Regatta
Contested by
Yale	Harvard
Information
First boat race	August 3, 1852
Annual event since	July 26, 1859
Current champion	Yale
Downstream record	Harvard, 18:22.4 (1980)
Upstream record	Yale, 18:35.8 (2015)
Course	Thames River, New London, Connecticut
Course length	4 miles (6.4 km)
Trophy	The Sexton Cup, The F. Valentine Chappell Trophy, The New London Cup, The James Snider Cup, and The Hoyt C. Pease and Robert Chappell Jr. Trophy
Number of wins
Yale	Harvard
55	95

The Yale-Harvard Regatta or Yale-Harvard Boat Race (often abbreviated The Race) is an annual rowing race between the men's heavyweight rowing crews of Yale University and Harvard University. First contested in 1852, it has been held annually since 1859 except during major wars fought by the United States. The Race is America's oldest collegiate athletic competition, pre-dating The Game by 23 years. It is sometimes referred to as the "Yale-Harvard" regatta, though most official regatta programs brand it "Harvard-Yale."

Originally rowed on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, it has since moved to the Thames River, near New London, Connecticut. Although other locations for the race have included the Connecticut River at Springfield, Massachusetts, and Lake Quinsigamond at Worcester, Massachusetts, the Thames has hosted The Race on all but five occasions since 1878 and both teams have erected permanent training camps on the Thames at Gales Ferry for Yale and at Red Top for Harvard.

The race has been exclusively between Yale and Harvard except for 1897 when the race was held as part of a three-boat race with Cornell on the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie, New York, where, although it lost to Cornell, Yale was deemed the winner of the Harvard-Yale race.

On May 24, 1843, with the arrival of the shell Whitehall in New Haven, Yale University founded the first collegiate crew in the United States. A year later, Harvard founded their boat club. These boat clubs served primarily a social purpose, until Yale's 1852 issuance of a challenge to Harvard "to test the superiority of the oarsmen of the two colleges". The first Harvard–Yale Boat Race—and the first American intercollegiate sporting event—took place on August 3, 1852. In this two-mile (3.2 km) contest, Harvard's Oneida prevailed over Yale's Shawmut by about two lengths, with Yale's Undine finishing third. The first place prize was a pair of black walnut, silver-inscribed trophy oars. The trophy oars were awarded to Harvard by General Franklin Pierce who in 1853 became the 14th President of the United States of America. Today the 1852 trophy oars are the oldest intercollegiate athletic prize in North America.

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