THE WINDS OF CHANGE the rate three times in the final sprint, and each time the anticipation made it seem almost effortless, although at the finish we were all nearly exhausted. “Never again have I felt that soaring experience. When Jim hit his stop watch at the finish line, he looked at it and commented that it must have wound down and stopped too early; but Jerry Romano had his own watch and confirmed the time of 5:41. “Again, that was for 1¼ miles! “(I should note that not all of us are in agreement with the time – a few thought it was faster, and a few remember it as slightly slower2628 – I don’t know whether it was ever officially recorded.)”2629 Ballarat The flight to Australia had stopovers in Los Angeles, Honolulu and Fiji, where the Americans ran into the British crew.2630 The rowing course was in Ballarat, a city of fifty thousand located seventy-seven miles or 124k northwest of Melbourne and once described as the Australian Klondike, the site of a gold rush in the 1850s. Lake Wendouree was set among pines and willows with a background of rolling, wooded country that gave it a homey, American Midwestern air. It featured “dead water, no current, about six feet deep,”2631 and had been dredged from a swamp. The resulting lake “was subject to a vicious weed growth. A machine cut fifty thousand cubic yards of weeds to clear the main course and four training courses, leaving a weed bank 2628 5:53, per Mendenhall, Oar, p. 13 and also per manager Roger Bullard, Rowing News, December 1956, p. 15 2629 Cooke, op. cit. 2630 Mendenhall, op. cit., p. 15 2631 Rowing News, December 1956, p. 5 1956 Olympic Rowing Poster Note the typo. on either side of the main course as a protection against side winds.”2632 “The rowing course was laid out diagonally across the lake. Five lanes wide, 2,000 meters could just be squeezed in, and the starting platform necessitated digging away about fifteen feet of the bank. “The Olympic Hostel, where the oarsmen and canoeists, 550 strong, were quartered, was a short half-mile to the northwest of the lake.”2633 When the Yale crew arrived, there were still eleven days left before the heats, but the Australian late spring weather was marked 2632 Australian Amateur Rowing Council, p. 2 2633 Mendenhall, op. cit., p. 16 FISA 725
