THE SPORT OF ROWING at the start line. Later he got to know Courtney when he came to America in 1913 to coach Yale:1293 “[Courtney] got Cornell to the top of the tree and kept them there for a decade. He always admitted to me that he owed this entirely to experience of the Cornell crew which competed for the Grand Challenge Cup in 1895. When his crew first arrived at Henley, it rowed a short quick stroke as high as 46 or even up to 48, but the coach soon saw that such high rates of striking were not conducive to speed on the Henley water, whatever they may have been on Cayuga Lake. “He altered their rig and the size of their blades, slowed their stroke down considerably and got them going faster. He had learnt a lot, and he admitted it.”1294 Cornell Professor B.I. Wheeler, the university administrator in charge of the crew program during those years: “There is no doubt that our crew in the Henley year tried a sharper, quicker stroke, having some regard to the shortness of the Henley course, and that in the following years the stroke was gradually lengthened out. “Mr. Courtney at the time told me that the stroke accommodated itself to the convenience and power of the men who happened to be in the boat, particularly the stroke oar. “There can be no doubt, however, that the Cornell stroke was a much longer and slower stroke in the years succeeding Henley, but it must be remembered that in 1897 and 1898 a stroke oar of characteristic figure [Frederick Briggs, 5’6” 168cm 150lb. 68kg according to the 1897 Poughkeepsie Regatta Program] sat in the boat, and he was not unlikely to be a very determining factor in what the crew did. “In training his crews, Mr. Courtney rarely paid attention to the number of 1292 See Chapter 24. 1293 See Chapter 42. 1294 Nickalls, Life, pp. 243-4 strokes a minute further than to note the fact. He rarely, if ever, gave any directions as to the length of the stroke or the time. I have been with him so much on the coaching launch that I can vouch for this much. If you can solve the riddle of the fact of the lengthened stroke, you can certainly do more than I can.”1295 Cornell rowing historian Charles Van Patten Young: “This view would seem to bear out the contention of Cornell oarsmen and of Mr. Courtney himself that the stroke has always been fundamentally the same with the exception of slight modifications, but that its length or rapidity is largely determined by the individual characteristics of the crew.”1296 Crowther: “Courtney brought in a long reach and a very hard catch that nearly resulted in a jerk at the beginning. Cornell tossed their heads away trying to catch hard. “The slide was cut down to seventeen inches, and the finish was well back. It was a remarkable change from the stroke of the previous years, and the rate reduced from the 40s to 34 and 36 and lower.”1297 Body Swing The shortening of the slide allowed for increased body swing forward, and this was accompanied by increased layback, yielding an overall doubling of the range of body swing, from +15° to -15° to perhaps +30° to -30°, but that was still nothing near English Orthodox +45° to -45°. Force Application Crowther’s analysis quoted above also describes “a very hard catch that nearly resulted in a jerk at the beginning,” strongly indicating segmented Kernschlag force 1295Qtd. by Young, Cornell Navy, pp. 38-9 1296 Ibid, pp. 38-9 1297 Crowther, pp. 117, 213 344
