THE BIRTH OF CLASSICAL TECHNIQUE “He was at the ‘head of the pack’ when the boat cutting incident leveled him to the ground, and he has rowed only a few good races since. “Gazing at that sawed boat in 1887, Courtney said to the writer, ‘That shell brought me blasted hopes and a name that God knows I never deserved. But I’ll live it down, and I’ll show these hounds who are now so willing to cast their cowardly aspersions at me that I remain what I have always been – an honest oarsman and a loyal friend.’”558 Historians have long speculated that three races between Hanlan and Courtney had always been planned. There is a strong possibility that in order to profit by increasing the drama of the contests, the backers of the two athletes arranged to have Hanlan win the first, lose the second, and then the two would be free to race in the third.559 Morrow: “Given ensuing events and Hanlan’s frequently questionable behavior throughout his career, a fixed set of races seems highly probable.”560 If Hanlan had decided he no longer was willing to lose to Courtney in the second race, perhaps because he had become Champion of England in the interim, this would provide a plausible alternate explanation for the behavior of both men in Chautauqua. Perhaps Courtney, having bet heavily on himself and unsure that he could beat Hanlan in a real race, would have needed a reason for the race to be cancelled. A Second Rematch Morrow: “Some 100,000 spectators were drawn to the third Hanlan-Courtney race [on May19,] 1880 on the Potomac 558 Palmer, pp. 637-8 559 Hunter, p. 29-30 560 Morrow, p. 34 River in Washington. Both Houses of Congress adjourned, businesses closed; hats, shoes and cigars named after the oarsmen were on sale everywhere; pickpockets disguised as clergymen roamed the crowds; partisan spectators wore the colours of their favoured oarsman; a system of coloured balloons and rockets was set up to provide spectators with information on the progress of the scullers, and gambling was rampant as ever.”561 Apparently, the tawdry experience of the first two races had taken a great deal out of Charles Courtney. President Rutherford B. Hayes was in attendance, but Courtney was only a shadow of his former self and didn’t even finish the course. Looking back years later, Courtney wrote, “I had no business to be racing any longer at that time anyway.”562 After rowing against Hanlan the first two times, he had lost his competitive drive along with any innocence left from his amateur days. Charles Courtney finished his professional career at thirty-nine wins and seven losses, and it was only five years later when he turned to coaching crew at Cornell University,563 twenty miles south on Cayuga Lake from his boyhood home, that his love for rowing was completely revived. Hanlan Returns to England Jim Rice, a fellow Canadian professional sculler from Toronto, raced against Ned Hanlan for many years, and after they had both retired and turned to coaching, succeeded him as coach of Columbia University in New York City. He often reminisced about Ned’s competitive career. Rice: “Having gained all the honors that were to be gathered on this side of the 561 Ibid, p. 38 562 Qtd. by Look, p. 73 563 See Chapter 31 ff. 153
