THE SPORT OF ROWING Olympic Gold in a single day,2998 joining an even more select group. After the Los Angeles Olympics, Jumbo Edwards left rowing for sixteen years, devoting himself to his Royal Air Force career. During World War II, once he was shot down and rowed a dinghy four miles through a minefield to safety. When he returned to the sport after the War, he was addressed as Group Captain Edwards. In 1948, Jumbo was convinced to coach an R.A.F. entry in the Thames Cup. He reread Bourne’s The Complete Oarsman and Fairbairn’s Notes on Rowing to prepare. His crew made the final at Henley but were beaten soundly by the Princeton Lightweights from the United States. In 1949, he joined the team of coaches charged with preparing the Oxford Blue Boat as their Tideway coach. He repeated in 1950 and in 1952, when Oxford finally ended a five-race losing streak. He continued on as part of the Oxford coaching staff, commuting in his plane for two years from his R.A.F. duty station in Germany. In 1957, he resigned when he felt the level of rowing proficiency had deteriorated and he was given neither the tools nor the authority to address the problem. Already developing a reputation for imperiousness, Jumbo lost a lot of support and credibility by this action. In 1958, the quality of the athlete pool at Oxford had much improved. When he took over from the first coach in the rotation, the crew did very well as Jumbo maintained his stress on the fundamentals of technique. Edwards: “They continued to improve. At the comparatively slow stroke of 25, they were able to dispose of a powerful and experienced Barn Cottage crew as pacemakers on two Saturdays running.” Barn Cottage coach Colin Porter was the next coach in the Oxford rotation. 2998 See Chapter 25. Jumbo Edwards was not a fan of Colin Porter’s stress on training, which came, to his mind, at the expense of good rowing form. However, he had tremendous respect for Porter the athlete and “the way he drove himself, not only every stroke but for every part of each stroke.”2999 Nevertheless, it was Edwards’ opinion that Porter exhausted the ‘58 Oxford Crew during his time with them, and as a consequence they lost the Boat Race by three and a half lengths. The First Oxford Mutiny After their 1958 loss, Oxford was in a bad way, and Jumbo became the proximate cause of what was soon referred to as the “Crisis on the Isis.”3000 Edwards: “In their endeavors to find a boat-race winning formula, Oxford had tried everything in recent years. They had tried Orthodoxy, they had tried Fairbairnism, and a blend of both in 1949. They had tried Cambridge coaches, they had tried Eton coaches, Australian Fairbairnism, the Metropolitan style, Americanism, Porterism. All had failed. “They had tried everything except teaching individuals the art of rowing, then blending them into a crew, training them to give of their best, and developing the will to win. Or to put it briefly, Oarsmanship, Crewmanship, Fitmanship and Mor- ale.”3001 That was Jumbo Edwards’ philosophy, and those four words formed the structure of his book, The Way of a Man With a Blade. 2999 Edwards, p. 127 3000 This particular newspaper headline was such a bon mot and so à propos that it had already been employed for decades and would be used again for the next American-led Oxford Mutiny in 1987. See Chapter 144. 3001 Edwards, p. 17 838
