THE BIRTH OF CLASSICAL TECHNIQUE sleek, shining, glistening racing shells [weighing then as now around 29 pounds or 13 kg]. They laughed, most of them, and a nineteen-year-old country boy who watched them was overcome with shame. “The canoe was his. “It was the home-made product of Charles E. Courtney, built with hammer, saw and plane, out of boards which had been picked up here and there. “The race for single scullers was for three miles. At the pistol, Courtney jumped into the lead with his awkward contraption. He held the lead as much to his own surprise as anyone’s. “He pulled harder with every stroke for, as he said afterward, he was afraid the ‘newfangled’ boats of his rivals would in some mysterious way catch him. Courtney went over the finish line a full half-mile in the lead and won his first race. “That was the beginning of his career as an oarsman, and before he entered the professional ranks in 1877, he had competed in more than ninety amateur events and had an unbroken string of seventy-eight consecutive victories.”512 At the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, while Ned Hanlan was winning his first international professional championship, amateur Charles Courtney, of serious demeanor, 6’0” 185cm and a solid 170 pounds 77kg,513 was winning the amateur championship. After Philadelphia, he turned professional, mostly to take on Hanlan. According to The New York Times, on July 14, 1876, Courtney was scheduled to row professional James H. Riley, whom he had beaten as an amateur, on Greenwood Lake in New Jersey “for a $500 prize, but at noon of that day [Courtney] drank iced tea 512 C.E. Courtney Dies From Shock in Boat, The New York Times, July 18, 1920 513 Mendenhall, Ch. III, p. 4 514 C.E. Courtney Dies From Shock in Boat, The New York Times, July 18, 1920 which had been drugged and was rendered too ill to row. “This [not uncommon] trick of his enemies created excitement throughout the country, and would not be the last time in his career that Charles Courtney would lose a race due to illness or incident. “On August 28, [1877] however, he easily defeated Riley and Fred Plaisted at Saratoga Lake for a purse of $800, rowing the three miles in 20:14½, the fastest time ever made to that day,”514 nearly a minute faster than Hanlan’s time in Philadelphia the previous year. By this time Hanlan had become champion of both Canada and the United States. The public demanded that he take on this new rowing phenomenon, Charles Courtney. The match would eventually take place in Lachine, Quebec. Sports Gambling Morrow: “Betting on horse racing events, snowshoeing contests, and matched rowing meets was the addiction of the era. Odds were published in the newspapers before every one of Hanlan’s races, and gambling outlets and pool selling ventures were widely available at the contest sites. In selling pools, the operator ran an auction on the athletes. The highest bidder selected his favourite athlete, established the odds on him, and the operation then auctioned the odds on the second athlete. Bids on the second athlete had to be close to the odds established by the original highest bidder. Pool selling worked best when the outcome was uncertain. “Front page headlines were blatant in providing gambling information. For example: ‘Toronto Men Putting Their All on Hanlan,’ Toronto Mail, 2 October 1878. For the Lachine race, ‘pools were sold . . . in the 143
