AMERICAN ROWING COMES OF AGE months and were to spend another month examining the entrails.”1186 The huge public interest in the Harvard- Oxford Boat Race had an unbelievable affect on rowing in America. Miller: “George Balch stated in the great book he wrote, The Annual Illustrated Catalogue and Oarsman’s Manual For University, Columbia College, St. John’s College-Annapolis, Massachusetts Agricul- tural College, Amherst College, U.S. Military Academy, Ohio Wesleyan College, Griswold College – Iowa, Lafayette College [Pennsylvania], and in 1871 – Bowdoin College [Maine]. “The 1874 Saratoga Regatta also included: Wesleyan, Dartmouth, Williams, Author / Newell Boathouse, Harvard University One of the Oxford Dark Blue Oars The Great International Boat Race, 1869 1871: ‘The newly awakened interest in rowing at many of the most noted seats of learning in the country, where heretofore little, if any, attention has been paid to this branch of athletic exercise, will undoubtedly lead, in time, to a great increase in the number of candidates for aquatic honors at future annual regattas, and bring to notice undergraduate crews, which may yet rival the performances of their predecessors.’ “Within twenty-four months after 1869, the number of boat clubs in the U.S. more than doubled. In 1870, there were nineteen new clubs founded in Massachusetts alone. “In 1869, only Harvard, Yale and Immediately rowing Brown raced. programs were founded at many colleges: 1870 – Cornell University, Princeton Trinity, and Rutgers. “Before 1869, collegiate rowing was a novelty, but within two years it was fully developed, the first organized collegiate sport. In 1871, the Rowing Association of American Colleges was formed, conducted the first college championship and set rules that became the foundation for the NCAA. “In 1872, the National Association of Amateur Oarsmen was founded, the first national association for any sport with the first rules defining an amateur.”1187 The greatest era of professional sculling was still in the future, but would the American public have cared about Hanlan versus Courtney had it not been for the Great International Boat Race of 1869? 1186 Dodd, op.cit., pp. 212-4 1187 Miller, p. 9 311
