THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN ROWING He had twice won the European Championships and was really quite a good sculler. “With the way I rowed, I just learned from long experience never to worry about what happened at the beginning of a race because I knew that I could keep just about the same speed all the way through. “So in my race with Verey, he went out and took a lead, and I caught up, oh, about halfway down the course. “There was a strong cross-wind that day, especially there at the half- way point. I knew that my stern post was pointed right at the start float, but I hadn’t thought about the fact that the wind was blowing me over. “All of a sudden, Bang! I hit against an upright on the log boom. “Luckily, I didn’t capsize. My oar was turned up square at the time, and it was knocked out of my hands. I grabbed ahold of it, but by that time, Verey was back ahead of me. “I thought, ‘Boy! I’m really going to have to work now!’ and I forgot all about pacing and just rowed as hard as I could. “I finally caught up to him, maybe a quarter-mile from the finish. I started to go by him, but it was just about all I could do to keep moving. “I knew he would look over at me, so as I began to go by, I turned my head and smiled at him as though there was nothing to it. “Immediately, he dropped back, and that’s the way I was lucky to win that sec- ond Henley victory.”2029 The story of the 1939 Diamond Sculls final points out an important innovation of Joe Burk. Whereas up to this point in row- ing history, most boats had gone out hard in an attempt to break the will of their oppo- 2029 Burk, personal conversation, 2005 British Movietonenews, 37002, 7/10/39, Henley Finals Verey congratulating Burk nents well before the end of the race, Joe rowed even splits down the course with the goal of reaching the finish line in the short- est time possible. Joe would regularly fall several lengths behind his adversaries before rowing them down, passing them and crossing the finish line all alone. His strategy was extremely effective against so-called fly-and-die oppo- nents. Just as with Karl Adam’s West German Ratzeburg Style twenty years later,2030 the body mechanics of Burk’s rowing technique was Classical Technique, mainstream con- current Schubschlag, but, as Adam would do again in the 1950s, Joe took the rating up, maintaining his smooth power application at a near 1–to-1 ratio between pullthrough and recovery. Burk and Fairbairn Interestingly, at Henley in 1938, British journalists saw a similarity between Burk and Steve Fairbairn: “He has invented a sort 2030 See Chapter 92. 555
