THE SPORT OF ROWING coxed-four, Rome) wanted to join us and enter a four-with. Neither of these guys was in shape or had been rowing, so Conn told me that once we got a comfortable lead, do the minimum needed to keep the lead so these guys wouldn’t be wiped out. “Shortly into the race, I told everyone we had a three-quarter length lead and to back it down. I kept looking over at the second place crew, reporting that we had a three-quarter length lead all the way down the course. As we approached the finish, I said, ‘We still have a three-quarter length lead. No sprint.’ “As we crossed the line, I looked at the finish flag way across the course come down and then suddenly up for the first and second place crews. Conn was livid that it was so close and that I had miscalled the margin. When we got to shore, the other crew was declared the winner by a whisker, and Conn started in on me. “‘What if you do that in a race that counts?’ “For the next two weeks of training (two-a-days), Conn would say to me, ‘Kent, pick a mark fifty strokes away and count the strokes to that mark!’ This happened every morning and every afternoon until we left for Buffalo. I got really good at my estimates, but if I missed it by even one stroke, Conn would say, ‘There you go again. Just like Lake Merritt!’ “This really hurt, even though most of my fifty-stroke estimates were right on. [On July 22, 1962 in Buffalo, New York, Findlay, Ferry and Mitchell easily won their second consecutive U.S. Championship and qualified both for the first-ever World Rowing Championships in Lucerne on September 7-9, 1962 and for the 1963 Pan American Games the following spring.] “After we won in Buffalo, we were standing behind the Amlongs’ Studebaker where they were cooking rancid beef they’d carried in their trunk since leaving Arizona where they had trained. Suddenly Conn turned to me and said, ‘Mitch, do you remember the call you made at Lake Merritt?’ “I shot back, ‘How could I forget with what you’ve been laying on me ever since?’ “Conn replied, ‘Well, I guess . . . Ed and I . . . maybe we forgot to tell you that the day after that race the president of the Lake Merritt Rowing Club called and apologized. He said the finish line judge was looking at the wrong finish line marker in our race, and that we had actually won the race by three-quarters of a length.’”3458 1962 World Championships Mitchell: “We qualified for the six-boat final by winning a preliminary race hands down3459 in a blustery headwind, but in the final with 500 meters to go, we were back in third place and eating Romania’s and Germany’s wakes. In desperation, we kicked into our finishing sprint early, caught Romania with ten strokes to go and then collapsed, all the way back to fifth place by the finish line.”3460 1 GER 2 ROM 7:22.60 3 URS 7:19.10 7:24.17 4 DEN 7:26.35 5 USA 7:26.73 6 POL 7:36.49 It should be noted that the conditions on the Rotsee were extremely fast for their final. The first five crews broke the previous course record.3461 Whereas they had beaten Denmark “hands down” in slow conditions two days before, the Danes had returned the favor in fast conditions. 3458 Mitchell, personal correspondence, 2009 3459 1 USA 8:21.48, 2 DEN 8:27.60 3460 Kent Mitchell, A Blueprint for Gold, op. cit. 3461 The Times of London, September 10, 1962 954
