INTERNATIONAL ROWING TURNS PROFESSIONAL them.”3967 The U.S. won in 6:40.72 with the Swiss a length back. The following day, the two heat runners- up and the two Germanies joined the heat winners in qualifying for the final through the repêchages. Since the conditions had worsened, times were more than fifteen seconds slower than in the heats. McKibbon: “The night before the finals, Demiddi3968 came up to John and me and Larry and Tony and he said, ‘Tomorrow we will win three Gold Medals for the Americas.’ “That was a nice time.”3969 The Final The rowing course at Klagenfurt is situated along the northern shore at the eastern end of the Wörthersee, a beautiful resort lake sixteen kilometers long and between one and two kilometers wide. Rowing conditions varied depending on both wind and boat wakes. McKibbon: “That day there was a headwind coming straight down the course. Out on the lake, there were whitecaps at the start line. “We figured the Russians were our main competition. We had won one heat. They had won the other, and they were the 1968 Olympic Champions.”3970 Van Blom: “Tom and I have very different personalities. My approach with competitors was, ‘Don’t antagonize them. Don’t get them mad at you,’ because it might fire them up, but Tom wanted to get their goats. 3967 Rowing Magazine, October – November, 1969, p. 14 3968 Alberto Demiddi of Argentina 3969 McKibbon, op. cit. 3970 Ibid. 3971 John Van Blom, op. cit. 3972 McKibbon, op. cit. 3973 John Van Blom, op. cit. 3974 McKibbon, op. cit. “After the heats, we and the Russians would come down to the course every day while the repêchages and semi-finals were going on, and Tom would look at them and hold up fingers to show how many days were left before the final. He did everything he could to intimidate them.”3971 McKibbon: “We had a plan for the race. We were very fast starters, the fastest in the world. Even in the years when we didn’t win, we would always take a length on the field, so we decided that after we had taken the lead we would take a ten any time somebody behind us made up half the distance we had gotten on them. It worked. We maintained a lead down the first part of the course.”3972 The Swiss led briefly just off the line, but at 500 meters, the U.S. crew led by 2.85 seconds, about a length, over the Soviets at the head of a tightly bunched field. Van Blom: “We had talked with Sy Cromwell after the Trials, and he told us that Europeans tend to take a move at the 1,000, and he recommended that we make our own move prior to the 1,000. So that’s what we did.”3973 McKibbon: “We decided to begin our sprint at 1,300 meters to go, which was very, very early. “Everything was going according to our plan when just before our move I remember seeing the Russian bow-man look over to see where we were. Ten or twenty strokes later he looked again, and they had fallen off the planet! They were still rowing the body of their race, and our early sprint had opened two lengths or something.”3974 Van Blom: “That Russian bow-man had looked around just before we took our 10, and after our 10 he looked again and literally did a double-take. [Van Blom demonstrates, 1097
