THE SPORT OF ROWING Perry: “Joe Baldwin, the Brigade Boxing Champion, rowed with one of those blades in the 4-seat, as did Peter Bos in 5, Howard Winfree in 6 and Gayle Thompson in 3 because they were all so strong that they beat the rest of us through the water with regular blades! “Soon thereafter, thanks to Ratzeburg, all American and European crews were adjusting for individual differences and rowing with shovel blades.”4119 Lindsey: “At Stanford in 1956, after we beat Cal at three miles, Ky Ebright came up to me after the race and said that at the mile mark the Cal coxswain heard the Stanford coxswain holler, ‘Three-quarter power!’ He asked me, ‘What’s this business of three- quarter power?’ I told him I didn’t know . . . when of course I did. “Starting in 1952, several runners around the world were attempting to break the 4-minute mile before Roger Bannister finally did it in 1954. At Stanford, I adopted their new practice of even splits down the race course. We would start rowing within ourselves and then pour it on more and more to maintain the same pace to the finish line. We ignored the other crews early in the race and worked entirely on rowing an even- paced race rather than an even-stressed race. “We did the same thing at Navy.”4120 Lindsey studied Arthur Lydiard, world-renowned coach of New Zealand middle distance runners and advocate of fartlek training.4121 Lou was also influenced by Indiana University swim coach Doc Counsilman, an advocate of interval training and of isometric and isotonic weight training, this in an era when 4119 Perry, op. cit. 4120 Lindsey, personal correspondence, 2006 4121 “speed play” in Swedish, variable speed cross-country running workouts developed in the 1930s by Gösta Holmér. crews traditionally never touched weights in the gym. Lindsey: “When I was at Navy, I advised the rowers to go to the weight training room and talk to the guy in charge about what muscle training would be helpful for rowing. I don’t know if they ever did it, but in those days everybody thought that weight training would ruin your flexibility and make you muscle-bound. That was another thing which I didn’t believe. “Back in the middle ‘80s,4122 Randy Jablonic4123 was out at the Oakland Estuary for spring training. I went up to him and introduced myself, and he told me he had been in the Wisconsin Jayvee when we went out to race them in 1960. He told me that before the race Navy was having breakfast in the Student Union at the same time that the Wisconsin crews were having theirs, and the Wisconsin crews were laughing at us because they were having steaks while Navy was having oatmeal and pancakes. “They thought Navy was foolish. “Randy told me that I had been at least twenty years ahead of my time.”4124 Perry: “Lou made us carboload, but we still wanted our steak and eggs. “Now everybody carboloads. “He taught us zero-pressure catches, but we wanted none of what we considered his ‘eccentric’ techniques!”4125 Bos: “Lou’s a great guy, one of a kind. It just took all of us headstrong oarsman a very long time to realize it.”4126 4122 At this point in his career, Lindsey was coaching National Champion junior crews for Marin Rowing Association. 4123 The Wisconsin coach from 1968 to 1996, see Chapter 106. 4124 Lindsey, personal conversation, 2006 4125 Perry, op. cit. 4126 Bos, op. cit. 1138
