THE SPORT OF ROWING It’s legs and swing only that count in a race,944 And to Hell with your old Melbourne styles.” He had six in his crew with his sons and their wives, Their style and their oars were both rough, But the drive with their legs was remarkably good,945 And their muscles and sinews were tough. So they started the race and the ‘Vics’ got the lead, And the Ark was a ponderous weight, And Shem started rushing, and Ham caught a crab, And Japhet was apt to be late, But he got them together and quickened the pace, And the ‘Vics’ were soon in the rear, And finished in style by at least half a mile, And the ‘Vics’ had no breath to cheer. “Now the moral of this is, you know-all young man, That a style may be one person’s fad, And a style that suits one crew will never suit all, Nor has done since I was a lad. But the essence of rowing is swing and leg- drive, And taking it through in one piece,946 And that is the essence, and always has been And will be ‘til rowing doth cease.”947 [my emphasis] 944 Fairbairnism 945 Ibid. 946 Ibid. 947 Edwin Michell: “The original manuscript I found was a solid block of text, no breaks between any of the lines. I found it hard to follow, so I invented the indentation. In hindsight this was probably a mistake. My sister informs me that the meter of the poem is ‘alternating reverse dactylic tetrameter and trimeter,’ also known as the ‘Australian Ballad’ and exemplified by the writings of Banjo Paterson. So there you go!” – personal correspondence, 2011 Fascinating. So Noah was really the first Fairbairn coach! History will show us that there remain descendents of these 1930s Australian rowers still arguing the same arguments, fighting the same fights, into the 21st Century. Fairbairnism in Germany During the first few decades of the 20th Century, many of the best émigré British coaches gravitated to Germany. Rowing had found a particularly good fit in German society, which had a militaristic bent long before the First World War. Children were encouraged to join rowing programs, “the aims of which were to abolish social ranking, involve all classes in character- forming activities and instill a love of nature, punctuality and discipline.”948 And, by and large, the technique they were being taught was based on Fairbairn’s teachings. In 1936, the German Olympic Eight from Rudergesellschaft Wiking e. V. 1896 in the Berlin suburb of Nieder- schönweide, was coached in the Fairbairnesque technique by Karl-Heinz Schultz, who had actually met Steve as a young rower.949 Frame-by-Frame Film Analysis The remarkable 1936 Leni Riefenstahl documentary, Olympia, gives this book its first opportunity to analyze in detail visual evidence of the rowing technique of an historic crew. Depending on the original medium, the speed of the original filming or videotaping and the stroke rating of the crew, a “motion picture” of a single pullthrough is generally made up of between ten and forty individual frames. 948 Dodd, World Rowing, p. 170 949 Ibid, p. 180 248
