THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN ROWING with the committee, he was more than happy to discuss his preferred technique. “At din- ner the comparison of the Conibear and Cook Strokes became so heated that the meeting adjourned to the rowing ma- chines.”1799 What sealed the deal was that the Yale captain couldn’t tell the difference! Both approaches included long layback. Film of Leader’s 1924 Yale crew shows 0°, +30° to -40°, 0-10, 0-10, 0-10 concurrent Schubschlag Classical Technique, using their long layback to give the boat a strong send at the finish. This was a far cry from Cook’s English-inspired long layback se- quential Kernschlag technique, but the point was moot. Leader Moves East So Leader took his 1st Generation Conibear Stroke to Yale. The New Yorker: “He brought with him for the undertaking at New Haven a com- plete staff, including Dick Pocock, one of the brothers Pocock, boat builders and oarsmen, who left behind them in England something of a record on the Thames. “It appears that the first great impression that Leader made at New Haven was not through his technical oarsmanship, but be- cause of the fundamental feeling that he could be and would be square – that neither wealth nor poverty would influence him against an oarsman or for an oarsman. “He appeared at a time when that atti- tude had to be emphasized. Yale had a row- ing committee that was blessed with this world’s goods, with financial and social prestige. Up to the time of Leader’s advent, Yale Varsity Eights had been known as ‘Fifth Avenue Crews,’ but today candidates for the crew with financial and social pres- tige behind them are no surer of their posi- 1799 Ibid, pp. 331-2 tions than they were in the most democratic days of Eli.”1800 In the spring of 1923, the new approach was noticed immediately on the East Coast. Time Magazine: “The Yale Eight, trained by Ed Leader from the Pacific Coast, defeated Cornell and Princeton. Leader’s crew, rowing a stroke unfamiliar to Yale eights since the days of the late Bob Cook, thrashed along at 33 for virtually the entire race, wearing down first Princeton and then Cornell to win by open water. “The slow stroke and the magnificent reserve apparent in the crew are considered excellent omens for Leader’s ultimate suc- cess.”1801 “The English stroke is nearing the end of its course in American rowing. For a good many years nearly every college in the country has run its navy on the American plan. Yet Yale and Harvard stuck to Guy Nickalls, Heber Howe,1802 their various as- sociates, and the techniques of the English Thames. “Last year Yale went a thousand miles in the opposite direction and summoned Ed Leader, coach from the State of Washington. Leader promptly threw overboard British theories, stroke and rigging. He developed an eight which defeated Pennsylvania, Co- lumbia, Princeton, Cornell and Harvard. “Rowing veterans declared his Varsity crew, which Harvard trailed by seven lengths, was one of the great eights of fifty- six years of racing on the New London Thames. “His Freshman and Junior Varsity crews won with equal distinction. The result seems to speak with decisive finality in the controversy long standing over the merits of the imported and the native systems.”1803 1800 Reed, op.cit., pp. 17-8 1801 Sport: Leader, Time Magazine, May 28, 1923 1802 the coach at Harvard in 1922. 1803 Sport: Thames Regatta, Time Magazine, July 2, 1923 479
