INTERNATIONAL ROWING TURNS PROFESSIONAL “Stan’s magic was that he listened, and he didn’t insist that we row his technique.”3598 Stan Pocock in 1960: “They are products of many coaches. I wouldn’t presume to tell them how to row. My feeling is that they do better if they don’t have someone trying to do their thinking for them. “Most of them are bigger and more mature than college oarsmen. And they are extremely eager to win because it’s a lot of sacrifice for them to row at 5 or 6 o’clock every morning. “They are not picture-book crews. I wouldn’t brag about their form. But they move.”3599 Nash: “Starting after the Pan Ams in 1959, we started rolling into the catch. We didn’t overreach so that we might slide in and miss water. We definitely didn’t let the water take our blades. We captured it. “We wanted the bottom-biting edge to roll back and in, and not to go back and have the top edge roll over because when you’re tired you then will miss water. “Our intent was to touch the water exactly when the blade was square and then have it disappear quickly but silently and deeply.”3600 Dick Lyon: “Stan had us imagine that there were a couple of rails under the water on either side of the shell, with pegs sticking up just below the surface. The idea was to hook your blade onto one of those pegs at full reach, and then pull.3601 Thinking of those pegs taught you to envision the water as something to be locked into, not missing 3598 Nash, op. cit. 3599 Qtd. by Georg N. Meyers, A Modest Coach, I was Lucky, The Seattle Times, August, 1960. (The date is estimated as the article was found clipped out in Kent Mitchell’s rowing album.) 3600 Nash, op. cit. 3601 Nash later used the same analogy in his own coaching career. See Chapter 137. 3602 Lyon, personal correspondence, 2009 3603 See Chapter 58. 3604 Nash, op. cit. 3605 Lyon, op. cit. water by driving the blade into the water (which will check the run of the boat by driving it backwards with pressure on the footboards before there is any force against the oarlock towards the bow), and not creating too much backsplash during the entry (which will check the run by creating a force on the back of the blade against the forward momentum of the boat). He expected a minimal backsplash, but no splash from the face of the oar. “Stan taught a pause coming down the slide towards the catch as a coaching mechanism to make us think of a smooth, deliberate entry, the recovery preparing us for the catch, but we never had time for a pause at a racing pace. “Immediately when the blade was covered in the water, we would begin a quick drive of the legs with the back prying against the legs to effectively use the strongest muscles of the body during the drive.”3602 Rating Nash: “Lake Washington Rowing Club rowed higher than anybody else in the United States, and we learned that from legendary stories about Joe Burk coming down the course at Henley in 1938 at 38 strokes per minute.3603 Nobody had ever heard of that before, but we wanted to row higher than everybody else, and the splits were indeed better.”3604 Lyon: “The ‘ratio’ of time during the recovery to time on the drive was considered important – quick drive, relaxed recovery. That, too, disappeared at a 40, when there was no ratio, but the quick drive remained.”3605 989
