INTERNATIONAL ROWING TURNS PROFESSIONAL obvious that Thames Club officials were not supporting our selection in spite of our winning the Stewards’ Cup for the club at Henley. “I record without further comment that Thames Rowing Club was not going to win any events at Henley in the next forty years.”2959 After the disappointment of 1956, Colin Porter refrained from competing himself during the following year and coached London University and then the previously underperforming National Provincial Bank Rowing Club. Doug Stuart, N.P.B.R.C. captain: “Unfortunately, the club had never aspired to ‘perform.’ It was regarded by the bank purely as a ‘recreational club’ where members of the male staff could relax with a bit of physical effort thrown in. The club’s then highlight of performance was H.R.R. 1928, when they won one heat in the Thames Cup and 1929, when they won two heats. The clubhouse was festooned with photographs of these crews. They looked pretty with their nice white singlets! Post WW2, the first regatta success was six years on, a lone sculler, me, in 1951, Junior Sculls at Walton Regatta. “Colin was coaching London University when I approached him in November 1956. He agreed to coach us only after his commitment to Uni-London was finished – which was after the Head of The River the next March – and then only on some vague indication of our demonstrated commitment to him. He would give me instructions by way of short handwritten notes. We did as we were told – probably more than if we had had him with us full-time. “We did three full-course trials of the Head each week, one on Saturday afternoon – we worked in the morning – one on Sunday morning and one in the afternoon, added to which we would do a half-course 2959 Porter, op. cit., p. 51 on Wednesday night with a flashlamp secured to the bows. “After the Head, we were sent on a seventeen mile run to Kingston and back. Unknown to us, this was our test before he agreed to take us on. Afterwards he told me that if any one of us had accepted the lifts in his car he was offering in the last stages of that run, he’d not have taken us on. “Colin’s university discipline was something scientific, and his personality reflected that, I think. He was ever a loner. In the time I knew him, about three years, he would willingly talk ‘rowing’ but little else. He lived just off our rowing club raft in an ex-WW2 infantry landing craft converted into a houseboat. He didn’t come into the clubhouse socially. “Short on social skills. Nevertheless, I still have a soft spot for him – he’s nicely free of bull♠ᵜ!♪. Training Stuart: “Colin was attracted to the training methods of Percy Cerutty, who was some athletics trainer in Australia who championed running up sand hills for fitness training.2960 Colin didn’t impose that on us, but I am sure that given the existence of some convenient sand dunes within running distance, he would have. I never liked running, I’m built like a frog. “‘Stampfls,’2961 were also introduced to us by Colin Porter in 1957. We rowed hard for 20 strokes, took it up to flat out for the next 20, then back to ‘hard,’ and so on for something like a mile and a half at a time. We did longer Stampfls between Kew Railway Bridge and Chiswick Bridge – about four minutes. We would go flat out 2960 He trained Herb Elliott to 1,500m Olympic Gold in 1960. 2961 a form of interval training based on the teachings of Franz Stampfl, who coached Roger Bannister when he broke the four-minute mile. 829
