THE SPORT OF ROWING The American Perspective American rowing historian Tom Mendenhall, describing the same 1897 Yale-Harvard-Cornell race: “Lehmann’s English style and rigging versus Courtney’s American tradition, with Cook somewhere in between. “Lehmann’s English reserve, the shy, uncommunicative Courtney and blustering, irascible Cook. Certainly, the crews must have looked very different.”1333 Seattle historian John Lundin: “The 1897 IRA1334 received extensive press coverage. Not only was college rowing widely followed in the late 1800s, but 1897 was the first time in over twenty years that Cornell got to face off against Yale and Harvard, so the race held special significance. “Cornell last rowed against Yale and Harvard in 1875 and 1876 [in the RAAC Regattas1335]. Even though Cornell’s rowing program had only begun in 1870, it won both races, marking the school’s emergence into the rowing community, and making its oarsmen instant heroes. “After the 1875 victory, ‘enthusiastic Cornellians rushed into the water lifting the oarsmen from the boat, marched them upon their shoulders up and down in front of the grandstand. At Ithaca, a great arch had been erected on campus and the town turned out en masse to join in the welcome.’”1336 Cornell 5-seat Mark Odell wrote extensively about the 1897 race, so long in coming. He “described Cornell’s frustration in his hometown newspaper, the Baldwinsville [New York] Gazette and 1333 Mendenhall, Harvard-Yale, p. 218 1334 It wasn’t the IRA but the Cornell-Harvard- Yale Race. 1335 See Chapter 27. 1336 Lundin, pp. 3-4 Farmers’ Journal, on July 1, 1897: ‘Cornell defeated Harvard and Yale [in 1875], which latter institution has claimed the championship in rowing for years, and which we have been waiting twenty-two long years to get a whack at. “‘We rowed them in 1875 on Lake the Saratoga and beat them. The next year [Yale] withdrew from the regatta, and since 1875 we have challenged them for a varsity race in vain.’”1337 The American press was highly critical of both Yale and Harvard. The New York Journal, June 25, 1897 “The two eastern colleges had regarded it as condescension to permit Cornell to join the contest.”1338 The New York Press, June 26, 1897: “For twenty years [Cornell] has sought an opportunity to meet on one course the crews of the two superior rowing universities. Through a puzzling policy of Yalensian ‘exclusiveness,’ this opportunity had been until yesterday denied her.”1339 The Rochester Democrat, June 26, 1897: “The old system which limited the great race of the year to Yale and Harvard . . . was unsportsmanlike. Time and time again it has left the brawny sons of Eli in the position of claiming a championship which they refused to defend. College sportsmanship should be as broad on the waterways as it is on the football gridiron.”1340 Technical Differences The disparate techniques seen at the 1897 Poughkeepsie Regatta were reported on in detail by American journalists, and they drew quite different conclusions from that of Rowe & Pitman. 1337 Lundin, pp. 3-4 1338 Ibid. 1339 Ibid. 1340 Ibid. 352
