INTERNATIONAL ROWING TURNS PROFESSIONAL where Kent was waiting to pick us up, the boat and any pieces.”3438 Mitchell: “Conn and Ed did not row to the Golden Gate Bridge with sand bags! I was in the bow the whole time, all four-plus hours. I slept most of the way, which is probably why Ed recalls that only sand bags were along for the ride. Someone else drove the trailer to the boat club in San Francisco and met us down in the Marina. “The standing waves we got caught in under the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge were a bit more terrifying for me, lying down in the bow, than for Conn and Ed. When I finally sat up, both the stern and bow decks were completely submerged. Only the gunwales were exposed. Any moment we were going to go under on the out-going tide and swim instead of fly to Tokyo for the 1964 Olympics. “The guys were rowing like crazy, trying to get the bow to come up onto the surface of one of the waves. Finally, the bow broke through. We glided up the slope of that wave and made like crazy for protected water inside the bay.”3439 Ferry: “Kent is the best coxswain I have ever rowed for. I still don’t remember him in the boat on the Golden Gate Bridge row, but it could indeed be because he was asleep. Conn did not allow coxswains to speak during workouts or races, only give stroke rates and position. In all his coxswaining since then, Kent has more than made up for this imposed silence.”3440 Lyon: “About those sand bags, Conn had told Kent that if he weighed one ounce more than the allotted 110 pounds [50kg], with both watches and all his clothes on, they would find someone lighter. (We called Kent the Ghost, as he is 5’8” [173cm].)”3441 Dick Lyon The Ghost Technique Mitchell Journal: “July 1, 1961. We scheduled a 2,000 meter run. The boat did not have any exceptionally bad moments. Our time, however, was a very disappointing 7:54. Because of the obvious inadequacy of this time, we agreed to go to seven workouts per week and hit the same course on July 8, three days before we were scheduled to leave for Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River course. “We worked on 500s. To improve the times, we had to diagnose our rowing errors and correct them in the next 6 workouts. By Monday, we had decided that our finish was the cause of the slow times. For the next three days, Conn kept reminding Ed, and therefore himself also, that early hands would solve the problem. [Times quickly dropped, and Findlay, Ferry and Mitchell went on to beat the Amlong brothers3442 for the 1961 National 3438 Ferry, op. cit. 3439 Mitchell, personal correspondence, 2009 3440 Ferry, op. cit. 3441 Lyon, op. cit. 3442 See Chapter 107. 949
