INTERNATIONAL ROWING TURNS PROFESSIONAL 1 USA 2 BEL 3 SUI 4 GBR 5 FRA 8:20.7 8:23.5 8:32.7 8:37.4 8:48.8 Logg and Price earned the nickname “Cinderella Kids.” Logg: “They put Cinderella on the boat when we came back from Helsinki. I think Tip Goes3273 gave us the name after we won. We weren’t supposed to do anything. We were just along for the trip.”3274 Chuck Logg and Tom Price were the first Americans ever to win this event in international competition. After Helsinki Both 1952 American Olympic pairs, coxed and coxless, kept the flame burning after Helsinki, and they would become rivals in the coxless-pairs event four years later. Logg: “We got back together in ‘54 and won the Pan Am Games Trials. “The Games were held on the canals of Xochimilco at altitude in Mexico City. We had a German boat, a good boat. Jack Kelly, Sr. helped us with our starts. I think we improved quite a bit there. “We got to the two-boat final, but Tom got the runs and was going both ends all night before the final. We had steak for breakfast the next morning, and I think he had two or three, but it didn’t do any good. We came down the course, and I just had to stop rowing or we’d have ended up on the beach. He was just so weak from being sick.”3275 Active-Duty Military in 1956 Hecht: “Like Fifer and me, Logg and Price were both in the service.”3276 Logg: “I was going to Army flight school at Fort Rucker, and Tom was going to NAVCAD flight school in Pensacola.”3277 Along with the two Helsinki-veteran coxless-pairs in 1956, Naval Officer Jack Kelly, Jr. in his single and the reconstituted 1952 Navy Eight, all still on active duty, were also training for Melbourne. These four boats were among the first American rowers to follow the emerging British and European model of active-duty military personnel assigned to train full time as professional athletes in order to represent their country in international competitions. As will be discussed in later chapters, this practice would accelerate in the United States during the following two Olympic quadrennials. Ted Nash:3278 “I met Chuck Logg in 1956. I was in Detroit trying for Melbourne (didn’t make it), and we hit it off easily. He made every regatta more fun for everyone. Like Fifer, Logg was crafty and a smart waterman. Both were always thinking ahead of the point in the race, both athletes with a plan, flat out. “I often looked at Tom Price as a very special high-end machine, somewhat like Dewey Hecht, both very tough stroke-men, never fading, always getting the most out of every precious inch of each stroke, both with impressive leg drive. They were self- disciplined and rowed it out every day.”3279 The 1956 Season Continues Four years after they had been U.S. teammates in separate events in Helsinki, 3273 1952 U.S. Chef de Mission. 3274 Logg, op. cit. 3275 Ibid. 3276 Hecht, personal conversation, 2009 3277 Logg, op. cit. 3278 See Chapter 84. 3279 Nash, personal correspondence, 2009 913
