Win is precious to Stone

Singles champion had right lineage

The women's club eights have the run of the river, and it was the crew from Yale University that ran away with the gold medal. (John Tlumacki/Globe Staff)

More than three decades ago, two local rowers accomplished the difficult feat of winning men's and women's championship singles, the premier event in the Head of the Charles Regatta.

Gregg Stone, rowing with Harvard's 1977 Rude and Smooth team, and his bride-to-be, Lisa Hanson, took home the gold that day, a milestone in their romance. Yesterday the couple was back to witness their daughter, Gevvie Stone, power through the cool, swirling winds on the river to match her parents' accomplishment.

Stone, a 23-year-old medical student from Newton and a member of the Cambridge Boat Club, took first place in women's singles by 6.4 seconds, beating Liane Malcos from the rival Riverside Boat Club.

In third place, another six seconds back, was Brett Sickler, a US team member and gold medalist in the eights at the 2007 World Cup stop in Lucerne.

Stone, who practiced on the course daily for months, said she knew her race was strong.

"I knew I was having a pretty good race, and had some really good stretches, especially after the Anderson Bridge," she said. "Then at the end, when three boats finished together [Stone started third], that was a sign I had a good race."

While her mother watched from the riverside, her father rode a bicycle along the 3-mile course, keeping an eye on his daughter.

"They never really pushed me too hard," Gevvie Stone said. "This is the river where I learned to row, and they showed me the importance of steering the Charles. I continued to row in high school and then in college [Princeton], and, of course, they were a huge part of my success."

Though splitting her time between rowing and Tufts Medical School, Stone says she will take a shot at the national team, "and I'll just see where it goes from there."

In championship women's doubles, for most of the way up the course, the US national team boat, rowed by Sarah Trowbridge and Stesha Carle out of Princeton, N.J., kept it close.

But in the last quarter of the race, New Zealand's Emma Twigg and Juliette Haigh turned on the power, turning a four-second lead at the Weld Bridge into a runaway, breaking the course record by more than five seconds in 17:46.037.

Well back in third place was a US boat rowed by two Olympic medalists, Caryn Davies (stroke on the Olympic eights) and single silver medalist Michelle Guerette. But their entry dropped to fifth after two penalties were assessed for rowing outside the course.

That moved defending champions Elizabeth Mygatt and Margaret Matia from the Potomac Boat Club in Washington into third.

Both New Zealand rowers were stunned to learn that they'd set a course record.

"I thought we were rowing like rubbish out there," said Twigg, who rowed a single in the Beijing Olympics. "I thought we were way out of time and were messing up the course."

Both agreed that the winding course, with its narrows and bridges, puts more of a premium on steering than muscle. Traveling from New Zealand with three-time world champion Mahe Drysdale, the winners said they got a thorough primer on rowing the Charles.

"Mahe went out with us when we practiced," said Haigh, who steered the Kiwi boat. "He showed us where to be in each of the turns, and that really helped us."

However, in his own race, championship men's singles, Drysdale's knowledge of the course could not offset a two-month layoff by the 6-foot-5-inch former Head of the Charles champion. After running out of gas well before the finish, Mahe watched his understudy, Nathan Cohen, power his way to a nine-second-plus win over Michael Sivigny of Nashua, N.H., who is with the GMS Rowing Center.

Drysdale, usually a favorite in any race he enters, slipped to sixth place.

"This is the first time I've beat him on four years of trying," said Cohen, who rows with Drysdale on the national team in New Zealand, finishing a 10th of a second behind him in last year's race. "I just went out and tried to row my race, and as I came around the Eliot Bridge I knew I could have a good time."

The championship men's doubles turned into a duel between two pairs that ran away from the rest of the fleet.

Peter Graves and Andrew Liverman from Bantam Boat Club in New Richmond, Ohio, held off the favored national team of Sloan DuRoss and Sam Stitt, 16:05.495 to 16:06.297. The California team of Wes Piermarini and Elliot Hovey was third.

Graves originally entered with his brother Thomas, who broke his wrist in a bicycle accident a week ago. So Graves called Liverman and they rowed together for the first time.

"He called and found me in a bar," said Liverman with a laugh. "I haven't rowed since the Henley Regatta [in July], but we were OK. We had fun out there. This was like NASCAR - neck and neck in the turns and nearly clipping another boat's bow. It was really a blast out there."