The annual Windermere Cup and Opening Day Regatta, the jewel of the UW Rowing teams' home schedule, has come and gone.
 
And, thanks to some great rowing and terrific weather, it was another successful first-Saturday-in-May on Montlake Cut.
 
Here's a look back at the week:
 
Windermere Cup Press Conference:
 

 
Here is the coverage of the press conference day from the Seattle Times (click).
 
And from the UW Daily on Husky rowers Calina Schanze and Tabea Schendekehl, and also this one on the stadium environment of the Montlake Cut.
 
KOMO Radio's Bill Swartz made the Windermere Cup the focus of his weekly Thursday Night Dawg House show, which you can check out here.


MONTLAKE NIGHT SPRINTS
The weekend got off to a great start with the first-ever Montlake Night Sprints. The event pitted the men's and women's Windermere Cup entries in 600-meter sprints, rowing west to east from the traditional Montlake Cut finish line to the mouth of the cut, finishing in front of the old ASUW Shellhouse, where the annual Party at the Cut was in full swing.
 
The races started at sunset. In the first race, it was the UW men's second varsity eight that pulled out the win, edging out the German crew. Midway through the race, the UW and Boston University varsity crews clashed oars, ejecting a BU rower from his shell just as the crews rowed under the Montlake Bridge. Fortunately, there was no serious injury, but both of those boats were essentially out of contention after that.
 
Here's video of the men's race (unfortunately, the video feed of the men's race had technical difficulties, meaning that the race was not captured in its entirety; here are videos of the lead-up to the men's race, followed by a video of the finish):
 

 

 
The women's race was a classic as all four boats (UW's 1V8+ and 2V8+, plus the UCLA V8+ and the German shell) all had a shot the entire length of the course. In the end, Washington's 1V8+ won the sprint by just a few feet over the German crew. Here's that video, from start to end.
 


WINDERMERE CUP & OPENING DAY REGATTA
With Friday night's action in the books, the regatta moved on to Saturday, where great crowds filled the Cut for some of the best weather conditions in the history of the regatta.
 
Here's the replay of the college races, including the Cascade and Windermere Cups:
 

 
Washington swept all four of the key races, taking both Cascade and Windermere Cups. The Huskies also won five of the other six prior college events.
 
Here are the recaps from here on GoHuskies.com (the stories are the same, but lineups are listed separately for the men's and women's crews):
 
Women's Recap
Men's Recap
 
Here's the UW photo gallery from the day.
 
The Seattle Times had this story on the Windermere Cup results and also this look at Opening Day of Boating Season.
 
Here's the UW Daily's coverage of the regatta. The Daily also had a story on the raceday scene around the Cut and posted a photo gallery.
 
Row2K.com posted four galleries from the regatta.
 
Finally, on Sunday, the day after the Windermere Cup, UW women's coach Yasmin Farooq appeared on Q-13 Sports' weekly "Q It Up Sports" with Aaron Levine.
 
Levine opened the program with this commentary (video) about UW Rowing's importance to Seattle.
 
Here's video of Levine's conversation with Yaz.