THE SPORT OF ROWING amazingly tough. There are hundreds of stories – one was something about him putting up a temporary building single- handed in Kansas, collapsing from a flu bug or something, waking up in the hospital, checking himself out immediately, and going back and finishing the building. “Many times he managed single- handedly to maneuver three hundred pound eights from the floor of the Stanford boathouse up onto the fourth rack! “I used to watch him carry down his 35- horsepower outboard motor on one shoulder with a five-gallon gas can in the other hand the hundreds of feet from the boathouse to the dock. It took at least two of us rowers to do the same job.”3369 Load in Pocock Coxed-Pairs In those simpler days, George Pocock built virtually every boat in every single boathouse in all of North America, from singles to eights, and despite coxed-pairs being the slowest and heaviest feeling of all rowing events, his coxed-pairs had the same oar length, the same collar placement, and the same rigger spread as all his other sweep boats up to his eights. Bill Tytus, current president of Pocock Racing Shells: “The spread was always the same. The oars were always the same. The difference was where the oarlocks were placed fore and aft, and they moved around an inch per boat, as I recollect. The pair had their oarlock pins even with the shoulders [at the stern end of the track]. The pins for the four were one inch further forward [toward the bow], and in eight the pins were two and a half inches forward of the shoulders.”3370 Findlay: “With Pocock’s rigging, the blades were in different places relative to the 3369 Lyon, personal correspondence, 2009 3370 Bill Tytus, in conversation with Findlay, 2007 oarsmen at the catch, mid-drive and release in a pair and in an eight.”3371 Tytus: “Later when they got to Tokyo in 1964, the Japanese being Japanese were measuring everything. They measured all the oars and all the boats, and they soon found a mismatch in our pair’s riggers. “Pocock boats back then were built to follow tradition with the stroke-man rowing port. Since Conn rowed starboard, he didn’t give it a thought and just switched the riggers, but since the hull is widest at the bow seat and tapers toward the stern, the starboard rigger [intended for the bow seat] had been built narrower than the port rigger [intended for the stroke seat]. Switching the riggers gave Conn even less than the standard spread for an eight and Ed a bit more, but Conn couldn’t care less about an inch here or there. “But the Japanese kept asking him what was wrong. Was the bow man weaker?”3372 Lyon: “On the oarlock spread, Conn said it really didn’t make much difference. If you want a centimeter more inboard, just move your hands a little further out on the oar handle.”3373 Tytus: “Years later, German coach Karl Adam3374 had riggers built to be adjustable and changed the spread between boats, the slower the event, the wider the spread. He wanted the load to feel about the same, but George’s approach might have been more sophisticated.”3375 Perhaps, but the hull speed was slower, and the load, the leverage at perpendicular to the hull in a coxed-pair in those days was the same as in eights, and with six less people to share the work. It took big, strong men like Conn Findlay to row a Pocock coxed-pair in the 1950s. 3371 Findlay, personal correspondence, 2007 3372 Tytus, personal conversation, 2009 3373 Lyon, op. cit. 3374 See Chapter 92. 3375 Tytus, in conversation with Conn Findlay, 2007 932
