The archenemy of rowers

Weeks Footbridge a real Head ache

Navigating the Weeks Footbridge - where collisions and curses are par for the course - is the most difficult task facing rowers in the Head of the Charles, which will be held this weekend. (Stan Grossfeld/file/Globe Staff)

It's a simple walkover, spanning the river up where the Harvard undergraduate houses line the shore. Yet it's fitting that the Weeks Footbridge is named for a former Secretary of War, given the combat that happens beneath it every October during the Head of the Charles Regatta, which will be held for the 44th time this weekend.

If you want to see close-quarters collisions and hear reverberating curses, the Weeks is the place to be, especially when three eight-oared shells try to squeeze through the middle opening together.

"It's great sport for the spectators at Reunion Village to see the carnage at the center arch," said regatta executive director Fred Schoch. "We know who went in first. Let's see who comes out."

Of the seven bridges along the 3-mile upstream course, the Weeks comes just before the midway point of the race. And while it's not as notorious a turn as Dead Man's Curve - the wide bend that precedes the Eliot - the Weeks, with its abrupt dogleg to the left, is decidedly more perilous, especially during the events for youth, club, and collegiate eights and fours, where inexperienced coxswains are common.

The Weeks is where fatigue starts kicking in, especially if there's a headwind.

"You're sucking wind pretty good," said Schoch, who competes in the Head every autumn. "You're well into anaerobia. You're praying you have enough gas to finish the race."

The Weeks is where at least a third of the racing infractions occur, reckons John Lambert, who directs the regatta's rules committee. It's a place of disharmonic convergence, badly in need of a rotary and a traffic cop, especially with 1,786 boats passing through over two days.

"You've got faster boats who've caught up with slower boats," said Lambert, "who've caught up with even slower boats."

All of which are trying to turn at the same time.

"Hanging The Weeks" is a delicate art, perhaps the greatest challenge for coxes accustomed to negotiating straight-line courses. Even if you've done everything right, you still can end up wrong if someone else's bad line intersects with your good one.

"You have to understand how to take it," said Stanford women's coach Yaz Farooq, the former US Olympic cox and captain who along with former Harvard tillerman Tom Tiffany gives annual Head clinics to nearly 400 coxes. "You can win or lose the race at the Weeks."

There are several ways to lose it there. You can find yourself amid a three-way pileup with oars entangled. You can get "T-boned," rammed broadside by a rival taking a different angle. You can run aground on the right bank.

"The worst thing you see there is a boat getting run into the Cambridge rocks," says Farooq, who made her Head debut in 1985 when she was a Wisconsin cox. "If you're a spectator, you're guaranteed that view once a year."

There are three arches across the Weeks, but everybody squeezes into the middle one. The left one (i.e., Boston) is forbidden, because crews use it to get to the downstream starting line across from Boston University. The right one (i.e., Cambridge) all but leads you to Harvard Square.

"The only reason you would ever use that one is to avoid a collision that's piling up in the middle," says Farooq. "Because you lose a massive amount of time."

The clock is of the essence in a head race, where boats go off single-file at 15-second intervals and the victor is determined by elapsed time. The trick is to row in a straight line on a course that becomes increasingly serpentine and where the wind is maddeningly whimsical. For a mile or so, it's fairly simple.

"You get this false sense," said Olympic silver medalist Michelle Guerette, the 2005 Head singles champion who rowed for Radcliffe and knows every ripple of the river. "You're on this straightaway and you can get loose on the Powerhouse Stretch."

Then comes the Weeks, which literally throws a nasty twist into things. Taking the proper line through the middle arch is vital even if it can be hair-raising, as Guerette found when she rowed a practice double with fellow Olympian Steve Tucker.

"You've taken years off my life," she shouted at him.

"Yeah," Tucker replied, "but it was a good line."

The Weeks is one bridge that you do have to cross before you come to it if you want to make it through unscathed.

"It's totally counter-intuitive," said Guerette. "It's like a Formula 1 car. You have to start taking the turn before you take the turn."

That's what Farooq, the Great Helmswoman, advises in "How To Cox The Perfect Head Race," the primer that she says was designed to reduce the Demolition Derby aspect of the regatta.

"It's so elusive," she said. "All of your senses are saying, 'Get to the bridge and take the turn.' "

The savvy cox focuses on the large green "turning tree" on the Cambridge side and begins maneuvering 10 strokes ahead of it and easing to port.

"That's one of the magic things about the Charles," said Farooq. "It's like somebody planted that tree there. You hit the tiller and tell the starboards to go. That's the secret mark for the people in the know."

If you take the correct line into the Weeks, you'll probably have the correct line coming out heading toward the Anderson Bridge that leads to Harvard Stadium. If you take the incorrect line, odds are you won't know it until it's too late.

"Coming out of the bridge has a lot of problems," said Lambert, who says that most of them are caused by boats on the Boston side.

The wall of noise from above doesn't help. Since there's no vehicle traffic across the Weeks, which is relatively narrow and close to the water, it's a popular place for spectators.

"They're overhead and hanging over," said Guerette. "Other than the Olympics and world championships, that's the loudest crowd I've ever heard."

The Weeks is no place for a cox to have to shout split-second instructions to a crew that's rowing backward, but it's the one place on the course where it happens routinely and in the closest of quarters.

"What typically kills somebody is multiple boats going through the arch," said Farooq. "If the inside boat hugs the arch, they can't make the turn correctly."

And then, it's literally crunch time. The Chinese collegiate eight that swamped beneath the Eliot two years ago was damaged in a Weeks fender-bender. That, of course, is the prime lure for thrill-seeking spectators who want a couple of T-bones with their riverside picnic.

"What we're trying to do at the Head of the Charles is provide the NASCAR experience," cracked Schoch. "Who says rowing isn't a contact sport?"

John Powers can be reached at jpowers@globe.com