THE SUNSET OF CONIBEAR advantage American Olympic crews had maintained quadrennial after quadrennial over their competition. Nobody had noticed that American rowing had been in relative stasis for half a century, and almost nobody had paid attention to the fact that the rest of the world had not been standing still in the meantime.4099 Two days after their opening heat loss, the repêchages were also a one-to-advance format, and they went better for Navy, as they had four years earlier for Yale in Melbourne. In Repêchage 1 into a cross-headwind, Italy advanced in 6:23.83, 0.58 seconds ahead of Japan. In Rep 2, France defeated the Soviets by 0.54 in 6:21.34. In Rep 3, the U.S. lined up against Great Britain and Sweden. Associated Press: “The United States Naval Academy today defeated Britain’s Oxford University crew and gained tomorrow’s final of the Olympic rowing championships. “Capping a rousing comeback, the Middies finally overhauled the fast-starting Britons at the 1,750-meter mark when they lifted their beat to 38 strokes per minute. Navy had trailed Oxford by distances ranging from three to ten meters. “They surged a half-length in front with a beat of 40 to the Britons’ 39 and held the advantage in a furious sprint in the face of a blustery headwind over the 2,000-meter course on Lake Albano.”4100 Perry: “In the repêchage when we were behind going into the last 500, being the stroke, I remember saying to myself, ‘We have to make the final! I’m not going to let those guys win!’ 4099 Almost nobody. See Chapter 97. 4100 Associated Press, Navy Eight Gains Olympic Final As Five U.S. Crews Advance, September 2, 1960 “Somehow I got the stroke up, and we went by them. We beat them in the last twenty strokes or something. That was a great feeling . . . “It’s funny how decades later you can remember six minutes of your life, and you remember it clearly. Crew’s a funny thing.”4101 Navy’s time was 6:31.77, significantly slower than the other reps, and the margin was 0.45 seconds, around a deck length. The Final Lindsey: “The food is what got us in Italy. As you can determine from the way we did in the U.S. Trials, we should have been right up there. “They brought us over to Italy three weeks ahead of time, and we lasted two weeks before we came down with food poisoning. Half the boat was on tea and toast for the week before the races. That was all they could hold down. I was afraid to push them until the final.”4102 Interestingly, at their 50th Reunion, nobody on the 1960 Navy Crew could remember being sick in Rome. Lindsey: “I didn’t give them a race plan for the Olympic heats, and I didn’t give them one for the reps. I had done the same thing at Syracuse, but in the final at the Trials I gave them one, and I intended to do the same at the Olympics. “In Italy, the bus to take the athletes to the regatta course and back to the Olympic Village was unreliable, so the Navy Athletic Director had rented a bus for us to use to go back and forth. That was inconvenient for me, so I rented a car. I had no trouble for the heats or for the semis, but the day of the finals the police wouldn’t let me through, 4101 Perry, op. cit., 2006 4102 Lindsey, op. cit. 1133
