ATHOL — With the unmistakable resonance of disappointment in his voice, long-time organizer David Flint confirmed that, for the second year in a row, there will be no River Rat Race on the Millers River.
“It’s just going to be an average Saturday in April,” he said.
Flint explained the reasoning behind canceling the race, which typically sees teams in canoes travel 5.2 miles from the Alan E. Rich Environmental Park in Athol to Riverfront Park in Orange, is “we can’t ask people to come into our community from all over the country, possibly carrying the (COVID-19) virus.”
“We don’t want to make matters worse by bringing all these people into town from all over,” he continued. “We just hope they won’t lose interest in it with it not happening for two years in a row.”
All of the local events associated with race weekend have also been canceled this year, including the Rat Race Pancake Breakfast at Athol Congregational Church, which raises money for Relay For Life; the Big Cheese 5K Road Race, which supports the Athol-Orange Food-a-Thon and Franklin County Meals on Wheels; and the Boy Scouts’ spaghetti supper at the Congregational Church, which normally takes place the evening before the race.
When asked about a postponement until later in the year, Flint responded, “Well, there’s another race that they have in the fall, but I don’t know if they’ll be able to have that, either. I know they didn’t this past year.”
The Orange-Athol River Rat Race Facebook page currently has the 2021 Millers River Challenge on the schedule for Saturday, Aug. 21. But given the uncertainty around the pandemic, that could change.
“The problem with (postponing) is the Army Corps of Engineers has to hold back water for us from both Tully Dam and Birch Hill Dam,” Flint explained. “And we can’t postpone it for, say, two months because in May there won’t be enough water to do it. The other problem is the trees are starting to bud after the second weekend in April, so they can’t hold the water back that long.
“So, that’s why we can’t do it later on in the spring,” he continued. “I suppose we could do it in the fall, but there are a lot of other races going on in the fall as well. So, it’s kind of tough.”
Flint said there’s another problem related to the holding back of water.
“When they hold back the water at Birch Hill Dam, if they hold back a lot it floods the Lake Dennison campground,” he said. “And people are going to want to start going camping pretty soon. So it’s kind of a no-win situation.”
Flint said he isn’t worried about local residents losing interest, certainly not those living in the Orange-Athol area.
“They’ve been dealing with it for over 50 years,” he said. “It’s a rite of spring. It’s the people from out of town; we may lose some of them. The only thing we can do is to occasionally put something out there on the website; toot our horn for all of our sponsors — that sort of thing.”
Flint said that, until last year, following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the race had never been canceled for any reason.
He said the first race was born out of a couple of friends placing a bet while bending elbows at a local saloon.
“In the springtime, they’d take a Friday afternoon off from work when the ice was gone, and they’d go down the river and fish where all the brooks came into the river,” he said. “They did this for a couple of years, then other people were sitting there listening and said, ‘Hey, we want to get in on that.’”
The first year, on March 21, 1964, there were 12 canoes — 24 guys — who wanted to make a little race out of it. The next year there were 22 canoes, Flint said, and the year after, about 40. It’s continued to grow since then.
Flint said the competition was taken over from the River Rat Committee by the Lions Club in 1991.
Reach Greg Vine at gvineadn@gmail.com.