INTERNATIONAL ROWING TURNS PROFESSIONAL [demonstrates straightening his arms], and I couldn’t do it. She said that I couldn’t straighten my elbow all the way because of the kind of joints I have. “I said, ‘Would you please call this coach of mine and tell him that?3800 International Rowing Don’s daughter, Laura Spero: “He and four other college buddies qualified for a four-man boat in the Lucerne, Switzerland World Championships in 1962, where he saw international rowing for the first time.”3801 This was a coxed-four organized by Allen Rosenberg3802 that had won the Maccabiah Games in 1961, the year Spero graduated from Cornell. In their second year they won the U.S. Trials and placed tenth in Lucerne. Spero: “I saw all these boats, you know, singles, doubles, quads – people from all over the world, and they were big, and they were strong, and they were fast. I just thought, ‘This is unbelievable!’ I thought I knew this sport, but I was looking at a fishbowl. There was a whole ocean out there! “ABC News covered the final of the men’s single sculls, which starred the reigning Olympic champion, Vyacheslav Ivanov of Russia.3803 “I grew up knowing ‘Ivanov’ as a name with an imaginary face, like a character in a book. He had angular features and these kind of hawk-like eyes, and short-cropped hair.”3804 Laura: “Dad watched from the sidelines as the Russian icon sprinted from third place 3800 Spero, op. cit. 3801 Laura Spero, My Dad, the World Champion, weekendamerica.publicradio.org, August 9, 2008 3802 See Chapter 107. 3803 See Chapter 86. 3804 Qtd. by Laura Spero, op. cit. into first over the last five hundred meters of the course, passing the U.S. National Champion, Sy Cromwell on his way to winning the 1962 World title. “Two years later, my father returned to the 1964 [European] Championships in a single. He would be facing Ivanov for the first time. By then, Sy Cromwell had become a close friend.”3805 Spero: “After watching the 1962 World Championships, there were two steps in me becoming a single sculler. The first was Jack Sulger3806 saying to me, ‘If you rowed at Cornell, you can row here at New York A.C.3807,3808 “I said, ‘Do you have any club singles?’ “He said, ‘No. You’ve got to find your own boat.’ “So I finally found this used Stämpfli single, and I was just sort of flopping around and having a terrible time. “I had met Sy Cromwell the summer before at the Worlds, and he was training at NYAC, too. He had already been picked for the Pan Am Singles by then – [he would 3805 Laura Spero, op. cit. 3806 Jack Sulger (1914-1979) had stroked the NYAC Eight in the 1936 Olympic Trials. (See Chapter 59.) A New York City policeman, he was coach and godfather of NYAC rowing from 1950 until shortly before his death. 3807 The New York Athletic Club has facilities in on Central Park South in Manhattan and on the shore of Long Island Sound in New Rochelle, New York, just over the line from the Borough of the Bronx. The New Rochelle facility has a pool, athletic fields, tennis courts, a marina and a boathouse for rowing. Adjacent is the 2,000 meter rowing course on Hunter Island Lagoon. The geography being somewhat jumbled along the border between the Bronx and New Rochelle, the course is often referred to as Pelham Bay or as Orchard Beach, the Long Island Sound public beach with which it shares a parking lot. 3808 Spero was in New York working on his PhD in physics at Columbia University. 1045
