THE SPORT OF ROWING L-E (‘LOVE EASY’ in the old military alphabet3234), they christened the boat Leaky Easy, which they painted on the side in Marine crimson and gold. “Fifer was furious! “As soon as we got to Philadelphia, we began our two-a-days on the Schuylkill, Beggsie alongside in the launch. “How much we took for granted! Jim was in the middle of his PhD dissertation; he put it on hold for us. He was coaching the Penn Freshman Crew, yet he found time faithfully to nursemaid us up and down the river twice a day. But we gave him what he wanted. “Jimmy solved the steering problem in our second workout. It even got to where I could pull Fifer around for a while. A few more tweaks, and we started to move.”3235 Beggs: “In the beginning, we worked on getting ourselves, and the boat, into sequence. I just talked to them, putting into words what I wanted in the way of physical action. Hecht was dipping down into the water farther than needed . . . things like that.”3236 Hecht: “From then on, all Beggsie wanted was more effort, always more effort, and more intensity. He was relentless, but in a good cause.”3237 “Fifer, who was an inch shorter and five pounds lighter than I, sat bow. The pair had no rudder because George Pocock, the builder, correctly believed that a rudder acted as a brake. We had to match power exactly and steer with slight increases in pressure on one side or the other . . . this when you’re already flat out.”3238 3234 Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog, Easy, Fox, etc. Replaced after 1956 by Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, etc. 3235 Hecht, correspondence, 2009 3236 Beggs, op. cit. 3237 Hecht, op. cit. 3238 Hecht, letter to The Wall Street Journal, August 18, 2008 3239 Beggs, op. cit. 3240 a well-known landmark on the Schuylkill River just upstream of the rowing course. 3241 This was similar to the workouts of Rusty Callow at Annapolis. See Chapter 64. Beggs: “Many of the pairs that we rowed against had rudders. It was a substantial advantage to leave the rudder off. If you wanted to get a jump on someone, you should follow Pocock’s model. “We tried out the rudder-less boat, and we liked it. As we got used to the boat, it straightened out. The big challenge was getting equal pressure from both oarsmen, and I put my foot down in terms of the stroke and tuning the boat.”3239 Training Hecht: “Every morning Jimmy rowed us three miles up the river to Twin Stones.3240 We clocked 22 beats a minute for twenty-two minutes, putting everything we had into each stroke “And that was the secret. “Everything! “I knew Fifer would never quit, and I dared not – but at the end of those rows I literally could not take another stroke. But that, of course, was the point – to work us right at the edge, not over the edge, but at the edge, for as long as we could take it.3241 “There was no need for weights in between workouts because this was weight training by another name. “And, of course, each day he would ask for more effort. “Only an oarsman knows how hard you have to work to make it look easy. I had never before realized the extent to which an athlete can perform, the remarkable reserves that are there, almost always untested, for us to call upon. I had only thought I had been training hard in 1952! 904
