INTERNATIONAL ROWING TURNS PROFESSIONAL Fellow Olympian Ted Nash:3376 “There’s a heck of a lot of difference between the load on the body in a straight four, like I rowed, which is flying along at sub-6:00 pace,3377 and in a pair-with, which is basically a full wheelbarrow. The loads were incredibly heavy. “Findlay and his partners rowed at 32 because they really couldn’t row any higher than that, except for a short burst. “What Conn was was a heavy, hard worker who could go on forever. He had endurance, and that is understated! “At 6’7”, Conn was naturally a very strong man, but his strong suit wasn’t coordination. He hated straight-fours. He hated straight-pairs. He didn’t like the single until his later years. He was perfectly suited to the coxed-pair. He loved the coxswain because his weight kept the boat stable.”3378 Counterpoint from Findlay: “The coxswain’s weight kept the boat stable? Ted should check a sit-up coxed-pair. “And I have more miles under my keel in singles than any other shell.”3379 Lake Washington Rowing Club Findlay: “In 1955, we told George Pocock we’d buy a boat from him if he’d coach us, but he preferred that his son Stan do the coaching, though he was there all the 3376 See Chapter 83. 3377 “When Nash was rowing the straight-four, it didn’t ‘fly along at a sub-6:00 pace.’ That was later. His 1960 Four in Rome was about a 6:24 crew, and in 1964 we rowed 6:23.1 at the Trials and may have gotten a few seconds faster, but could only hold sub 6:00 pace for 500 meters or so. In 1956, Conn’s Pair-With rowed about a 7:50 pace. By 1960, they were rowing sub-7:40 and in 1964 about a 7:24 pace.” – Dick Lyon, personal correspondence, 2009 3378 Nash, personal conversation, 2004 3379 Findlay, op. cit. time. He said that Stan had a way of putting things that might be more meaningful than his own choice of words. He was the Englishman, and Stan was the American kid. “So they both coached us, but Stan Pocock was our coach. “We’d go up to Seattle at Christmas time and over the summer. Of course, in those days George was still the National Team boatman, so we always had him, too, when we were racing, and that helped.”3380 Ed Ferry, Conn’s pair-partner 1961- 1964: “Stan Pocock is a very quiet, wonderful man and the most successful USA Olympic rowing coach ever. “He once told me if he ever started yelling as a coach, he would quit. He also said to a bragging medal winner, ‘All an Olympic Gold Medal shows is that at one day in time you were the fastest in the world . . . sitting down going backwards doing something absolutely useless!’ “He coached us without pay for a decade.”3381 Seiffert: “Our coaching before the 1956 Trials was unique. Every couple of weeks we would get someone to come out in a launch from the Redwood City boathouse and take 16mm movies of us rowing. We would then mail the film to Stan Pocock in Seattle, who would return long letters describing what they were doing wrong and what to do about it.”3382 Conn’s request for coaching was the beginning of what would evolve a few years later into the Lake Washington Rowing Club.3383 Findlay as a Teammate Looking back on Conn Findlay’s rowing career from the perspective of the 21st 3380 Findlay, personal conversation, 2005 3381 Ferry, personal correspondence, 2009 3382 Seiffert, op. cit. 3383 See Chapter 83 ff. 933
