ENGLISH ORTHODOX MEETS CLASSICAL TECHNIQUE Riefenstahl, Olympia, Teil II: Fest der Schönheit 1936 RG Wiking Berlin Men’s Eight Olympic Bronze Medal 5 Gerd Völs Technique was Jesus Style, with leg drive far more aggressive than Fairbairn recommended. These film frames give us our first hint that the sequential-concurrent question is more complicated than it might initially seem. The German technique was hybrid-concurrent, leg and back effort beginning concurrently at the entry, but leg drive strong enough to initially immobilize the back swing, and so giving the appearance of sequentiality, leg motion first, back motion second. 0°, +40° to -20°, Effort: 0-7, 0-10, 0-10, Appearance: 0-7, 3-10, 4-10 Films of crews in the heat of competition can vary widely in quality based on the era, the equipment, the weather, the distance from the camera to the lane in which the crew is rowing, and the skill of the camera operator. Accordingly, interpreting these films can be a challenge. I have chosen the following format for summarizing a particular technique in this book: Shin angles at the entry and body angles at the entry and release are measured in degrees from vertical (0°), using a protractor on the image. Generally, I round to the nearest 5°. For shins, beyond vertical at the amount is positive, and less than vertical is negative. Body swing forward is positive. Layback is negative. The beginning of the stroke is arbitrarily assigned the time value 0 and the end the time value of 10. I have carefully superimposed individual film frames upon one another to ascertain, when possible, the beginning and ending of the leg, back and arm effort and the beginning and ending of the leg, back and arm motion, which is often different, and then expressed them on the 0-to-10 time scale. A rowing stroke can then be summarized as follows: -10°, +45° to -30°, 0-9, 0-10, 5-10, which would mean that in this hypothetical case: • leg compression brought the shins to within 10° of vertical at the entry. 249
