THE SPORT OF ROWING “While our boat was out of commission, I asked Rusty Callow3263 if we could go out in a four with a couple of his spares. And he told me, ‘Oh, that’s alright. You guys are just over here for the trip. You can miss a practice. There won’t be any problem.’ “We were pretty much orphans over there in Helsinki. “We were trying to maintain our weight. I was pretty well down, so we’d have dinner, and then we’d go out and get a quart of ice cream and eat it. Some of the coaches called us the Ice Cream Kids, but Mr. Pocock saw us, and he was all upset. ‘You’re going to shorten your breath,’ and so on and so forth. “At that time, the Cold War was on, and it was a big deal between the U.S. and Russia. We met the Russians out on the water, and I don’t know if we understood each other, but we said, ‘Okay, let’s do a start.’ We moved away from them so fast that I thought that they were just setting us up, but we never did see them in any of our races. “We came in last in our first heat. There were maybe 300 meters to go, and I was squared up and ready to put my oar in the water when the Belgian stroke-oar knocked my oar into the air. Of course, that drove Tom straight into the water, so we did kind of a pivot on his oar. We were rowing without a rudder, so I had to let Tom get us straightened out. He did several strong strokes, and we took off and nearly caught them at the finish, but we were last, no doubt about it. 1 SUI 2 GBR 3 BEL 4 USA 7:46.0 7:47.0 7:48.9 7:50.7 “Mr. Pocock met us at the dock, and he was very much impressed. He said, ‘Man, did you really come back! You really closed that distance on those guys,’ which was encouraging for us to hear. “All of us from that first heat plus France would eventually make it to the final.”3264 There had been four initial heats of four boats. The top two in each heat qualified for the semi-finals. Everybody else, including the U.S., went to the first repêchages. The next day there were two heats of four boats each in the first repêchage with only the two winners to qualify for the second repêchage. Logg: “The second day we rowed against Poland and the Saar.3265 Both left us at the start. We were rowing our own race at our own pace. “We had worked our way past Poland, but the Saar was still ahead of us when all of a sudden they stopped. One of their guys was so beat that an official finally had to get into their boat and row it back in. We finished that race rowing at about 27.”3266 1 USA 7:28.4 2 POL 7:39.7 3 SAR dnf 4 GER dns Then there were two semi-finals of four boats each that did not include the U.S. The winners in each went to the final. The other six went to a pair of second repêchages to meet the two winners from the first repêchages. Logg: “In our next race, the second repêchage, we rowed against the Aussies and the Danes. We rode a bus down to the rowing venue with the Aussies and one of 3264 Logg, op. cit. 3265 a small French protectorate in the years after World War II, absorbed into the Federal 3263 Head U.S. Olympic Coach and coach of the U.S. Eight. See Chapter 64. Republic of Germany in 1957. 3266 Logg, op. cit. 910
