BRIDGEPORT — The gritty Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal is home to the Tough Cup, the annual regatta hosted by a Southwest Side rowing club.
This year, the race course has gotten longer — it used to run about 3.7 miles, from the Pulaski Road bridge to Ashland Avenue, but the starting line has been been pushed farther southwest to Cicero Avenue.
"Now it's a real man's race, 4.2 miles ... That allows us to go through more bridges and it's more interesting. And because the river is so easy to row on, so easy to navigate, it allows us to do that," said Montana Butsch, founder of the Chicago Training Center, which aims to teach low-income Southwest Side high school kids the sport of rowing for free.
Casey Cora says the event is more than just about finishing first:
The program, which also helps teens with college applications, nutrition and fitness, earned a nationwide rowing group's top honors for its pioneering commitment to diversity.
The race, also known as "The Rumble on the River," kicks off bright and early Saturday, at 8 a.m. It's expected to wrap up by noon.
In addition to the Chicago Training Center crew, six more teams from across the city and suburbs will participate. They include New Trier High School, St. Ignatius College Prep, Crystal Lake Rowing Club, St. Charles Rowing Club and the Wilmette-based Alliance Rowing Club.
The Chicago Rowing Foundation, which took home the Tough Cup last year, will not defend its title.
Crews on Saturday will assemble at a patch of land at 2800 S. Eleanor St., near Canal Origins Park.
That site is already the de facto home of the Chicago Training Center — it's where the teams store their racing shells and equipment in shipping containers — but it's expected to become the group's permanent base when the city completes a modern boathouse project there.
Spectators looking to take in the race action can watch from any of the bridges over the canal between Cicero and Damen avenues, but Butsch suggested a Western Avenue boat slip and the finish line, which will be visible from the park area just north of the shuttered Sun-Times printing plant in the 2700 block of South Ashland Avenue.
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