THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN ROWING How does Joe describe this achieve- ment? “I must admit that it was done under ‘ideal’ racing conditions.”2015 Len Habbitts, Burk’s opponent in the final, reminisced in 1989: “No one ever beat him. I knew when I went out to the final that I was going to get a bloody good hiding. My coach had told me that. [Burk] never practiced the course, but in the actual race he never dropped below 40. He was like a little clockwork motor, and he kept going. “Very nice American, and I felt no an- ger at him leading me.”2016 There have been a number of dominat- ing scullers in rowing history, but the only man before or since who approached Joe Burk’s athletic dominance and innovative brilliance was Ned Hanlan himself! Fred Plaisted (1849-1943),2017 the pro- fessional sculler who toured Europe with Jim Ten Eyck and actually rowed against Ned Hanlan in 1876, lived long enough to befriend Joe Burk. He colorfully wrote about his fellow Boathouse Row sculler: After Joe Burk won the dimond sculls at Henley on the Temes England, an Eng- lishman said to me, ‘You people have sent a big farmer to win the dimond sculls. Ha- ven’t you got some lords and Dukes like we have to row at Henley? You know, them people that don’t work.’ ‘Yess mister, we have lots of that kind. This country is full of them, but we call them tramps. Everyone works in America. Even the President of the United States choped wood for a living. Once he choped wood he could not have been a gentleman.’ I swong the right. Two blows struck. I hit him. He hit the floor. He was down to the count of 10.”2018 2015 Burk, op.cit. 2016 Hurray Henley, TSL Production, Channel 4, UK, 1990 2017 See Chapter 9. 2018 Plaisted, Fred, personal scrapbook, Mystic Seaport Library Fred Plaisted was 90 years old when Joe Burk won the Diamond Sculls in 1939, and I imagine that the wood-chopping president to whom he was referring was Abraham Lin- coln, whom he would have remembered well! What Were Burk’s Innovations? Limiting Body Swing? Metropolitan rowers of the 1820s first broke away from the artisan waterman stroke partly by eliminating layback, so lim- iting body swing goes back to the very dawn of sport rowing technique.2019 American Olympic coach Allen Rosen- berg recalls, “Joe did the same thing as Ratzeburg [the innovative crew from West Germany] twenty years later.2020 The rate of striking was so high that he had to cut both ends of the pullthrough.”2021 In fact, newsreel footage2022 reveals that Burk did not cut the front end of the pullthrough at all. Joe Burk rowed that 1938 Henley final with a generous +30° body angle forward and considerable leg compression. His posi- tion at the entry was even reminiscent of Ellis Ward’s 1901 Penn Henley crew and Richard Glendon’s 1920 Annapolis crew2023 with the exception that he kept his knees together. Much of his height was in his trunk, and he compressed his upper body tightly enough onto his thighs that his shins reached nearly vertical. His head followed an elegant arc up and away from the entry, and his shoulder lift 2019 See Chapter 6. 2020 See Chapter 92. 2021 Rosenberg, personal conversation, 2004 2022 www.BritishPathé.com 2023 See illustration, Chapter 51. 553
