THE SUNSET OF CONIBEAR from entry to release,4219 but it is my experience that those rowers and coaches in the last fifty years who have been taught to delay their arm effort have little awareness of this undeniable historical fact and believe that their way makes so much intuitive sense that they cannot fathom how or why anybody could ever have been foolish enough to think otherwise. Here is Karl Adam’s reason: At the entry, the arms need to be engaged simultaneously with the legs and back, but they do not necessarily bend much initially. The point is to connect the hands to the lower back through the arm, shoulder and latissimus dorsi muscles so that as the seat moves, the oar comes with it. Nash: “All at once, all is engaged. That tells a lot!”4220 This was also precisely Fairbairn’s line of reasoning. Two young American coaches in Tokyo in 1964 also agreed. As we shall discuss shortly, those coaches were Harry Parker4221 and Allen Rosenberg.4222 Despite all this, proper arm usage remains one of the three great issues in rowing technique still unresolved in the minds of today’s coaches. Athlete Selection Dietrich Rose: “By 1962, there were a lot of people coming, and they all wanted to make the eight.”4223 By 1964, the Ratzeburg crew had become a composite team made up of the best candidates from all over West Germany. Whereas they had all become members of Ratzeburg in 1964, the 1968 FRG Eight 4219 See Chapter 166. 4220 Nash, op. cit. 4221 See Chapter 101. 4222 See Chapter 109. 4223 Rose, personal conversation, 2010 in Mexico City was made up of athletes with allegiances to six clubs: Ratzeburger Ruderclub, Ruder-Union Arkona Berlin, Binger Ruder-Gesellschaft, Deutscher Ruder-Club 1884 Hannover, Ruder- Gesellschaft Wetzlar, and Frankfurter Rudergesellschaft Germania.4224 The attraction and recruiting of all-stars from throughout a country was a major innovation. By 1968, a succession of athletes had been arriving at Ratzeburg on weekends for a decade to train together before returning to their home clubs during the week. eight that raced Ratzeburg in 1967 and 1968: “[At Curt Canning,4225 from the American the 1967 European Championships,] the Ratzeburg oarsmen were all of championship caliber in singles and small boats. Only one member of their eight, in fact, was from Ratzeburg itself, and he was the ten-year-old coxswain. All the others would commute on weekends, and work individually during the week to maintain their conditioning.”4226 Rosenberg: “They did a lot of their training in singles and raced each other [when they got together on weekends]. The selection criterion was speed in a single.”4227 Dietrich Rose:4228 “The way Adam selected us was that he would sit at the end of the dock, and we would line up at one particular spot on the lake. It was 560 meters from there to the end of the dock, so every piece that Karl had us row to test us was on that course, and that’s how he came up with all those champion boats. He hardly would go in the motorboat. In the 4224 See Chapter 109. 4225 See Chapter 102. 4226 Curt Canning, The Longest Summer, Dart- mouth-Harvard Football Program, October 28, 1967, p. 72 4227 Rosenberg, USRA Clinic, Chula Vista, CA, Sept 11-2, 2004 4228 See Chapters 107 and 122. 1163
