Tom Bolles’s lucky fedora

Tom Bolles’s lucky fedora is a battered hat that accompanies Bolles’s crews through moments of suspense, ritual, and triumph. Its significance lies not in any demonstrated power to change a race, but in the way the crew repeatedly handles it as a tangible sign of hoped-for luck—and in the irony that a Washington victory associated with the hat costs Bolles the future he has been considering.

Bolles’s Hat and the Stakes of a Race

As the freshman crews prepared to race on the Hudson, Bolles wore the fedora while thinking about his own uncertain future. Harvard had shown that it would pay handsomely for a new head coach, and Bolles understood that he was again near the top of its list. If his boys came through for him once more, he expected an offer and thought he would probably accept. The hat therefore appears first not as an isolated good-luck charm but as part of a race day on which the crew’s success and its coach’s departure are already bound together.

The boys did come through. Washington held close at a rate of thirty-two, moved ahead of California after the one-mile mark, and answered California’s late sprint with a finishing burst to win by a full length. Bolles’s boys had delivered the victory he had hoped for; with it, he lost the position he had occupied with them. The fedora’s association with luck is thus set against an outcome that is triumphant for the crew but a turning point for Bolles.

A Ritual at Princeton

At Lake Carnegie, before the Olympic trials, the fedora becomes something the crew actively incorporates into its preparation. The Washington rowers sat bare-chested in the shell, their oars in the water, concentrating on the man ahead and settling themselves into the boat. Bobby Moch reached beneath his seat and touched Bolles’s battered hat, accepting a few extra ounces of weight in exchange for what the boys regarded as a lot of luck. The gesture makes the hat a shared ritual object: it is not worn by Bolles in this moment, but carried within the crew’s shell and brought into the race with them.

That ritual is set against a difficult opening. Washington started poorly, and early strokes by Gordy Adam and Stub McMillin went wrong, briefly unbalancing the boat and checking its momentum. The contrast gives the hat’s presence a precise narrative role: the crew brings its charm with it, but must still recover through its own rowing. Luck is invoked at the same time that balance, timing, and collective effort remain decisive.

The Hat Beneath the Olympic Seat

Before the final in Berlin, Moch again tucked Bolles’s lucky fedora beneath his seat. The setting made the gesture more charged: the American crew faced German and Italian boats, while the boys’ mismatched shorts and old sweatshirts contrasted with their rivals’ coordinated uniforms. Ulbrickson, George Pocock, and Royal Brougham judged the crew’s chances slim, particularly from lane six and with Don Hume looking gravely unwell. The hat was therefore placed in the shell not as proof of confidence in an easy victory, but amid doubt about whether the crew could win at all.

Its repeated position beneath Moch’s seat links the Princeton trial and the Olympic final. In both races, the fedora is close to the crew but does not replace the crew’s work: at Princeton, Washington must regain momentum after its poor start; in Berlin, the men must face a formidable field under adverse circumstances. The object’s meaning depends on that tension between the wish for luck and the visible demands of rowing.

From Charm to Comic Prop

During the final, the hat reappears in a different role. As California and Washington charged through the last five hundred yards, the press car erupted. Royal Brougham shouted encouragement, while Bolles began beating a stranger on the back with his lucky old fedora. The same object that had been carefully touched and tucked beneath a seat now became part of the unruly celebration surrounding the race.

Across its appearances, the fedora moves from something Bolles wears while weighing a possible departure, to a charm carried into competition, to an improvised prop in the press car’s excitement. Its recurrence gives the racing narrative a small, concrete thread of continuity. Yet the hat cannot make victory uncomplicated: Washington’s freshman success is precisely what leaves Bolles behind, while its later presence accompanies the crew’s attempt to overcome doubts about its Olympic prospects. It signifies the hope invested in luck, but the outcomes remain the work—and the cost—of the people around it.