THE SPORT OF ROWING proved to have that vital bit of extra strength and won by 1 second.”1067 “‘[Beresford] was very vicious in the boat,’ said Eric Phelps, his coach for the [1936] Berlin Olympics. ‘He would give a sickly smile to the man next to him. He never knew what it was to pack up.’ But he also epitomized the ethos of an amateur prevalent at that time.”1068 Back in 1921, “Beresford stopped in the Diamonds to wait for his opponent, the Dutchman F.E. Eyken, who had hit the booms. Eyken eventually won by a length and a half.”1069 Geoffrey Page: “Jack Musée d’Orsay, Paris, RF 2010 Claude Monet, Le Bassin d’Argenteuil, 1872 Oil on canvas, 23 ½ x 31¾” (60 x 81cm) had put the word ‘gentleman’ back with ‘amateur.’”1070 In 1922, Jack again lost in the final of the Diamonds, this time to Walter M. Hoover of the United States,1071 who just four weeks earlier had won the Philadelphia Challenge Cup,1072 symbolic of the world amateur sculling championship. 1924: The First Gold By 1924, Jack, Jr. had been the top rower in England for five years. That year he won his fifth consecutive Wingfield Sculls crown and his second Diamond Sculls, qualifying him to represent Great Britain in the Olympics for a second time. 1067 Page, p. 60 1068 Hero of the Past: Jack Beresford, op.cit. 1069 Dodd, Henley, p. 129 1070 Page, p. 61 1071 See Chapter 55. 1072 Ibid. The site of the rowing at the 1924 Paris Olympics was Argenteuil, downstream on the Seine and just northwest of Paris, best know today through several impressionist painting masterpieces by Claude Monet. During the 20th Century, the infrastructure of Paris had expanded to envelope the area, but when Monet painted during the 1870s, it was way out in the countryside. By 1924, it was still rural, but also the site of several factories. Benjamin Spock, 7-seat in the U.S. Eight from Yale University: “The actual place for the race was some miles away from where we practiced. It was a very hot spell of weather in Paris that year, and the sewers emptied out where the race was rowed. “It was unpleasant.”1073 In 1924, Jack Kelly chose not to defend his 1920 Olympic singles title, focusing instead on repeating in the double, so 1073 Spock, pp. 6-7 284
