THE SPORT OF ROWING Hanlan’s Greatest Innovation In speaking of the lessons passed down from Ned Hanlan, English professional sculler Ernie Arlett,651 who coached champion crews at Northeastern University in Boston during the 1960s and ‘70s, wrote of “getting the true feeling of a boat running, instantaneous application of power from the legs, transmitted through the body with clever hands to the blades, which are drawn through in one piece, finish well- drawn home.”652 Leg power “transmitted through the body with clever hands.” Legs, back and arms all involved concurrently from the instantaneous entry right through to the finish. No one in history up to the 1880s had ever rowed in such a manner. And “finish well- drawn home” admirably describes acceleration to the release. Schubschlag Schubschlag Significantly, when it came to force Schubschlag rather Alama, Mark of the Oarsman Jim Ten Eyck application, Hanlan had come to the same conclusion that T.S. Egan had forty years earlier, Kernschlag.653 The Police Gazette: “He does not kick his stretcher, or shove his feet against it with anything like a jerk; but he sets them against it and pushes with the heaviest and mightiest force he can possibly apply, much as a man pushes with his legs and feet upon the floor 651 See Chapter 116. 652 Qtd. by Ferris, p, 92 653 See Chapter 6. when he bestrides a half ton and lifts it – if he can. “This supreme push, far more forceful than any sudden kick could be, throws every ounce of pressure against that fulcrum that he can possibly impose. Hence he gets more power into his work than any less effective pusher could get, and it rushes him forward accordingly.”654 What contemporaries would have seen in observing a sculler like Ned Hanlan accelerating smoothly to the finish would have been the absence of expected explosive effort at either end of the stroke, absence of the initial leg drive or heave of the back toward the bow early on and then back toward the stern in a ferryman’s finish, a boat moving without the aggressive stop-and-start stern check at the entry they were used to, perhaps even a “haunted boat?”655 Bill Sanford, head coach at Syracuse University during the last than third of the 20th Century, provides an additional clue. His most famous predecessors at Syracuse were Jim Ten Eyck, Ned Hanlan’s close friend and coach, and Ned Hanlan Ten Eyck, Jim’s son, and Ned’s godson and namesake. “When I began coaching at Syracuse, I did some research on Ned Ten Eyck, and I found he had a reputation as a beautiful sculler. He used his back and legs together at the entry, used more layback than you see 654 Harding, p. 27 655 Qtd. by Kelley, p. 33 174
