ENGLISH ORTHODOX MEETS CLASSICAL TECHNIQUE rowing differently from the varsity style, much the same as the Melbourne crews, also Jesus College, Cambridge.”678 Page: “Joe Sadler had coached the Jesus crews in the 1870s on blade-work and not on body form. These crews were outstandingly successful on the Cam and at Henley. [my emphasis]”679 Steve: “When I went to Cambridge in the year 1881, the Jesus men told me that they had got Joe Sadler, the Champion professional sculler, to coach them, and he taught them to concentrate on working the oar to move the boat.”680 “Under this coaching, which was a great departure from the Orthodox teaching, the Jesus crews were very successful. They won the Ladies’ Plate five times. They won the Grand and Stewards’ in 1879. The Jesus men told me that W.B. Woodgate,681 a very great judge of rowing, wrote that the Jesus crews would have won the Boatrace for the last ten years if they had not been hampered by oarsmen from the other colleges.”682 “I do not claim to have come to England and taught the English rowing, but finding the Jesus men were rowing differently from the other colleges, I carried on their ideas of leg-work and blade-work, a style started by Joe Sadler . . . so I started with my two maxims: ‘Get the crew to concentrate on working the oars [and not the body]’ and ‘Mileage makes champions.’”683 After the Boat Race, in the middle of his very first rowing practice in the Jesus College Mays Boat of 1882, Steve told the man on shore who had been appointed by the Captain, Arthur Hutchinson, to coach 678 Qtd. by Page, p. 28 679 Ibid, p. 29 680 Fairbairn On Rowing, p. 487 681 See Chapter 12. 682 Fairbairn On Rowing, p. 488 683 Qtd. by Page, p. 28 them, “Do you mind not talking to the crew; your talking is upsetting their rowing.”684 Fairbairn: “I had tubbed the crew to work their blades, and he was talking body form. That is the difference between the old teaching and my method of coaching. [my emphasis]”685 No matter its origin, on the first day Steve Fairbairn had already taken personal ownership of this revolutionary alternative to English Orthodox Technique, and from that time forward, he coached all of his Jesus crews from within the boat. Page: “Steve lengthened the slides in the Jesus boat from eight inches to fourteen. There was the usual outcry that accompanies all departures from the traditional, which Steve found surprising since London and Thames were successful at Henley [with the longer slides].”686 Joe Sadler alone could not have been the originator of the technique that Fairbairn began to teach at Jesus. Steve’s brothers had been coached by Sadler in the 1870s, and yet they had to be converted to the more natural technique being rowed in Melbourne when they returned home, and Steve had to replace Sadler’s slides in the Jesus boats with longer Hanlanesque slides. No, Sadler laid the foundation at Jesus by making the initial break from Orthodoxy, and even though Steve continually gave him credit, it was Fairbairn who then formulated an approach that drew from what he had seen and experienced all around him. From Australian and Tideway amateur rowing, Steve appropriated a more natural and less rigid approach to technique. From Joe Sadler, he adopted the concept of focusing on blade-work and not body-work. He then added the longer slides originated by Ned Hanlan and the “Mileage makes 684 Fairbairn On Rowing, p. 350 685 Ibid, p. 350 686 Page, pp. 28-9 185
