THE SPORT OF ROWING As a result, Geoff was not entirely in sync with the rest of the crew’s back swing. After Tokyo At the end of the 1964 Olympic competition, Ted Nash flew straight from Tokyo to Philadelphia to begin his new coaching duties at the University of Pennsylvania. He has been a legend in American rowing and a fixture in American coaching ever since. Joe Burk,3709 Ted’s gentleman boss during his early years at Penn, considered him “a great guy, loyal and hard working. He had an important role in our success, but he did it from another point-of-view, that of physical and mental toughness.”3710 The 1964 serviceman-based Lake Washington Rowing Club Coxless-Four turned out to be the last of its kind. As the Vietnam War heated up, American active- duty military were required to spend their time fighting instead of training for the Olympics, but the idea of bringing the best post-collegiate oarsmen together to form composite crews was increasingly recognized as the only possible way to be competitive with international combinations during the new Era of Professionalism. Other programs, notably the Pennsylvania Athletic Club in Philadelphia during the 1980s and ‘90s under the leadership of Lake Washington alumnus Ted Nash,3711 would attempt with considerable success to recapture the LWRC magic. Ultimately, the future would belong to National Team Camps. Chris Kirkland: “After Tokyo, Geoff hooked up with Emory Clark to tour Australia and New Zealand, blazing a 3709 See Chapters 94 and 95. 3710 Burk, personal correspondence, 2005 3711 See Chapter 132. 3712 Kirkland, personal correspondence, 2009 3713 Tex Clark. See Chapter 118. 3714 Mittet, op. cit. 3715 Qtd. by Georg N. Meyers, Hollywood Stuntman, Phil Durbrow’s Dream, The Seattle Times, October 16, 1964 3716 Mittet, op. cit. riotous bacchanal. They raced a straight- pair, once memorably forgetting to lock their swivels and capsizing off the dock in front of the Australian Olympic Team. “They remained close friends for life.”3712 Mittet: “After the 1964 Olympics, I sold my return ticket to the States and traveled throughout Japan for several months with a member of the New Zealand Eight.3713 I studied historical and contemporary Japanese architecture and city planning. I returned to the States via the Panama Canal to New York on a merchant ship. “It was during my Japanese travels that I met the woman that I would be married to for twenty-three years and who remains a best friend. We have a lovely forty-year-old married daughter, Naomi, and we are loving grandparents to our three-year-old grand- daughter, Sachiko.”3714 After Tokyo, Phil Durbrow was considering another Olympic quest in 1968, this time in the modern pentathlon. “I can ride, swim, shoot and run. I don’t know anything about fencing, but I’m ready to learn.”3715 Theo Mittet and Dick Lyon would row together again in a U.S. Coxless-Four in 1966 with other LWRC alumni. Mittet: “In 1965, I trained with Lyon and others at Stanford University Rowing Association for the 1966 World Championships in Bled, Yugoslavia.”3716 1016
