THE SPORT OF ROWING watching a crew they had soundly defeated two days before go sailing across the line the winners.”3294 Later that summer, this Washington Athletic Club Four raced and beat the Van- couver Rowing Club/University of British Columbia Coxless-Four that went on to win the Olympics representing Canada.3295 Seiffert: “With a rudder, they would have easily won the Trials and then another Gold Medal for the U.S. in Australia. Two of the four came back in ‘60 as the Lake Washington Straight-Pair.”3296 Would the rudderless pairs of Fifer and Hecht and of Logg and Price succumb to a similar fate on Onondaga Lake? The New York Times: [Olympic Trials, Syracuse, July 1, 1956] “Things didn’t go so smoothly for Charley Logg, Jr. and Tom Price of the Rutgers Rowing Club in the pairs-without-coxswain event. Today they were beaten in the final by the United States Navy Pair of Duvall Hecht and Jim Fifer. “The two former Stanford stars, who were on the 1952 Olympic squad as competitors in the pairs-with-coxswain, won impressively. Logg and Price finished second, almost sixteen seconds behind the winners. However, Hecht and Fifer were not that much better than the Olympic Medal winners. Near the end of the race, the Rutgers rowers were caught in swells twice and their oars flailed through the air.”3297 Price: “It was quite a blustery day. The water was really choppy, and we had a tough time keeping the oars in the water.”3298 3294 S. Pocock, p. 128 3295 See Chapter 65. 3296 Seiffert, personal correspondence, 2009 3297 Michael Strauss, Yale Eight Triumphs in Tryout Final and Qualifies for Olympics, The New York Times, July 2, 1956 3298 Price, op. cit. Logg: “A rogue wave came in on the port side. Tom caught it. We pivoted, and then we did a mini-start and took off again.”3299 The New York Times: “Today’s program was delayed for thirty minutes while the log boom which lined the last quarter of the course was repaired. The job was never really completed, and a small opening in the boom, it was believed, produced the swells which caused Logg and Price their difficulties.”3300 1 U.S. Navy 2 Rutgers R.C. 3 M.I.T. 7:22.8 7:38.6 7:39.0 4 San Diego R.C. 7:54.9 Logg: “I don’t care what the newspapers said. They ended up beating us by three and a half seconds or so. We were both way ahead of the other boats.”3301 Seiffert: “The water was rough! These were the conditions that defeated the rudderless W.A.C. Straight-Four. They were unable to stay off the log boom near the finish. It is all the more remarkable that Jim and Dewey, also rudderless, had no such trouble.”3302 Logg: “A cold front went through, and we had a northwest wind, and it was rougher than a cob out there. “Why the hell were the Trials on Onondaga? Why did they stop the Trials after our race and not row the eights until later in the evening when it had calmed down a bit? An eight’s a damn barge compared to a pair. “I protested because we got a wash from a Coast Guard cutter or some such boat, and that’s how Tom caught a crab.”3303 3299 Logg, op. cit. 3300 Michael Strauss, Yale Eight Triumphs in Tryout Final and Qualifies for Olympics, The New York Times, July 2, 1956 3301 Logg, op. cit. 3302 Seiffert, personal correspondence, 2009 3303 Logg, op. cit. 916
