AMERICAN ROWING COMES OF AGE “Would it not also increase the tendency to buckle or slide up to meet the oar [ferryman’s finish] instead of using the arm power to pull the oar back to the body?”1421 It is inevitable to speculate whether or not the example of Ward’s Penn crews had a significant influence, even pointing the way as Courtney formulated his new approach to force application. After all, though Cornell had demonstrated their superiority over Harvard and Yale, by 1900 Penn had crushed them at the IRA for three straight years. That had to have made a strong impression on Courtney. Nevertheless, Courtney’s force curve experiment completes a remarkable picture of American collegiate rowing at the beginning of the 20th Century. Two coaches, Ellis Ward at Pennsylvania and Charles Courtney at Cornell, were both teaching Classical Technique, concurrent Schubschlag pullthroughs. This was nothing short of Fairbairnism at its very best, five thousand miles from Cambridge and several years before Steve Fairbairn returned from Australia to take over coaching at Jesus College! But by adding concurrent arms, Charles Courtney may just have coached the first crew in history with body mechanics that would have looked modern. Once he had adopted concurrent legs, back and arms, he was never again bothered by competition from the Pennsylvania crews of Ellis Ward. Force Curves in History Courtney’s rowing force curve experiment was not history’s first. In 1895, Oxford coach Gilbert C. Bourne1422 collaborated with a fellow member of the Oxford faculty, E. Cuthbert Atkinson, who 1421 George S. Kephart, qtd. by Look, pp. 146-7 1422 See Chapter 16. 1423 Bourne, Textbook, p. 10 1424 E. Cuthbert Atkinson, A Rowing Indicator, Natural Science, March 1896; Some More Rowing Experiments, Natural Science, August 1898 1425 Mallory, Optimal Force Application, p. 4 1426 See Chapter 168. 1427 Herberger, p. 74 had “invented a rowing indicator which recorded, in a series of curves, not only the type of stroke rowed by individual oarsmen but also the amount of work done at every part of the stroke. By means of this indicator, Mr. Atkinson obtained a number of valuable data, almost the only ones of their kind existing.”1423 Atkinson published his results,1424 but there is no indication that Bourne or any other coach ever actually used the research to advance or improve the theory or practice of rowing technique. Courtney made use of his, and in so doing, changed rowing history, as will be discussed in the following chapters. Characteristics Force curves have been of interest to a number of coaches and theorists throughout the second half of the 20th Century, ever since computers began making generation of curves increasingly practical. Biomechanical testing conducted by Professor Toshihiro Ishiko at the 1963 Tokyo International Sports Festival included collection of force curves from individual athletes with on-the-water telemetry and high-speed cameras.1425 He discovered that curves can take on an infinite variety, and that there was no guarantee of uniformity within crews, even those which have been together a long time.1426 Professor Ernst Herberger of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) discussed force application strategies in Rudern, the GDR Text of Oarsmanship.1427 379
