Egyptian Nermine Khenefar found rowing in her 40s when, winded on her ascent of Mt. Kilimanjaro, friend and explorer Omar Samra suggested she take up the sport to increase her aerobic capacity. After just a few years, Nermine is an avid masters rower and indoor rowing competitor who is seeking to row everywhere she travels and welcomes visitors to row with her on the Nile.

Meet the leadership that helps make HOCR happen – new HOCR Executive Director Tori Stevens, and Director of Racing Brendan Mulvey. Find out their personal stories of involvement in sport, and what about this regatta attracts 12,000 athletes and a few hundred thousand spectators each year to the waters and banks of the Charles River.

Kick off Breast Cancer Awareness month with Survivor Rowing Network Executive Director Beth Kohl and rower, survivor, and Pink Ribbon Row organizer Angie Gabel. Our guests are on a mission to create more opportunities for cancer survivors to row. Since launching in 2023, SRN has grown to 27 programs and in 2024, Head of the Charles will host its first-ever Survivor Row event.

Teens are aware of stranger danger from a really young age, but most of them have never thought about misconduct from known adults. Using SafeSport training as a springboard, Coach Libby Boghossian leads in-depth discussions with her Brookline High School rowers about the concepts of consent, power imbalance, and coercion.

In 2021, USRowing boated its first-ever Beach Sprints National team and in 2022 Next Level Rowing appeared on the scene, training high performance rowers who have gone on to win medals at domestic and international coastal regattas. To talk about this discipline which has been raced for generations in Europe, we connect with coastal rowing rising stars Christopher Bak and Christine Cavallo, and their coach Ben Booth, co-founder of Next Level Rowing.

Dr. Mary O’Connor was a member of the influential 1976 Yale women’s rowing program that sparked big changes following the passage of Title IX. Today, she’s a member of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports – an advocacy group “seeking to elevate and empower female athletes by protecting safety, fairness, and opportunity for girls and women.”

Seattle has the Pococks. Philadelphia has the Kellys. And Boston has the Stones. We’re really excited to kick off season 4 with mother/daughter Olympians Lisa and Gevvie Stone. Lisa was a member of the first U.S. women’s Olympic rowing team in 1976 and went on to a 42-year coaching career. Gevvie was a natural when she took up rowing in high school and was a member of the 2012, 2016 and 2021 U.S. Olympic teams.

When eight octogenarian rowers and a coxswain take on the Head of the Charles, the lessons are huge: about lifelong fitness, being relentlessly active, and those moments you can only find after shoving off the dock.

When Susan Kinne cracked the bottom of a wooden hull, she never could have guessed that nearly 25 years later she’d be a master craftsman handling boat repairs of all sizes at Lake Washington Rowing Club. Just north of 70 years old, Susan handles everything from setting pitch to building Frankenstein 3x boats, is a powerhouse with tools and in a scull, and is a well of information about Pocock Racing Shells.