Final Results: 1 USA INTERNATIONAL ROWING TURNS PROFESSIONAL 1970 7:07.82 2 AUT 7:12.03 3 GDR 7:13.56 4 FRG 5 URS 6 SUI McKibbon: “In the following years 7:13.65 7:14.77 7:17.98 It was obviously a great race . . . for the minor medals! McKibbon: “I think what really helped us win that regatta was our bladesmanship, our technique in the rough water. We were very fit, and we were quite fast.”3978 Van Blom: “I remember being really nervous the whole week because I knew we had a shot to win, and we thought it was going to be close between us and the Russians. “We were leaving our hotel for our race, and the TV was on in the lobby, and I saw Hough and Johnson win their final, and it brought chills to me just thinking about how great it would be if we won ours. “But when we did win it, it wasn’t nearly as exciting as the anticipation. Once you’ve done it, you sort of take it for granted.”3979 McKibbon: “After we came back to the States from Klagenfurt, Tony and Larry and John and I were showering in the Yale boathouse after a little workout, and Larry takes in a big breath and says, ‘You feel it?’ “We were all standing there in the shower. ‘Feel what?’ “‘This is as good as we’re going to feel in the rest of our lives!’ when we didn’t match the results of 1969, a lot of things had happened. After Klagenfurt, I herniated two disks in my back skiing over Thanksgiving, but John and I had already committed to each other for the next year. “The doctor came in and said it would be two years before I could recreationally row or ski again. John and I won the Long Beach Christmas Regatta a week later. I would go to work, but all I could do for a workout was go down to the boathouse, put on my training clothes and walk for a thousand meters and back. It was so painful that I’d have a total, full cold sweat, take a shower and go home. “Then John had a serious bicycle accident, and then he had a head-on collision with his Volkswagen into some Buick. We were all banged up. Everybody had given up on us, and when we got to Europe I was really sick. I couldn’t talk. I had laryngitis, but we still became the first Americans ever to win the Double Sculls Challenge Cup at Henley, and then we finished third at the Worlds in St. Catharines, Ontario. “Despite everything, we were the only American boat in the finals that year.”3980 Van Blom: “Everybody had gone home. We couldn’t even find a boatman to give us a hand.”3981 Historical Perspective From Spero, Cromwell and Storm, through Nunn and Maher and Van Blom and McKibbon, the 1960s were America’s greatest decade in world sculling. Van Blom: “If the quad had been a 3977 Rowing Magazine, October – November, 1969, p. 14 3978 McKibbon, op. cit. 3979 John Van Blom, op. cit. FISA event back then, we would have cleaned up!”3982 3980 McKibbon, op. cit. 3981 John Van Blom, personal conversation, 2007 1099
