THE SUNSET OF CONIBEAR “We trained from July 15 through August 9, [when] we went to the National Championship Regatta on Hunter Island Lagoon. We knew that we had some stiff competition. Vesper had broken their eight into fours, as we had, and we were rowing against the stronger of their two fours, Paul Schlenker, Clem Kopf, Emile Henwood and Jake Fiechter with Robert Zimonyi as their coxswain. Our coxswain, John Hartigan, had been at Vesper and was replaced by Zimonyi at the last minute. He was happy to get the chance to compete against them. “Zimonyi had been a member of the 1948 Hungarian Olympic Team, which won the Bronze Medal in the eights, and the 1964 Vesper Olympic Eight for the U.S., which had won the Gold.4442 He had been an Olympic medalist before I was born, and his four had already beaten the Russians, Germans and Danes earlier in the summer. “We were pretty confident with our boat. We had done some very good times in Philadelphia and were ready for the race. “Vesper pulled out quickly, but we rowed even with them and then through them in the body of the race. In the last 500 meters, we pulled ahead and won by one and a half lengths. “John Hartigan, who has a really foul mouth when provoked, took his wrath out on the Vesper boat that had dropped him. He yelled at them as we moved through. “‘Goodbye, Fiechter! ♣Ω☺Җ you, Schlenker!’ and he went on and on. “As it turned out, we had to do some serious apologizing to the NAAO for his language, and John even had to apologize over the PA system. “We won, and that was really all that was important. We were going back to Long Beach, and Vesper was not.”4443 4442 See Chapter 107. 4443 Jones, op. cit. 4444 Purdy, op. cit. 4445 See Chapter 82. 4446 See Chapter 85. 4447 Jones, op. cit. Purdy: “What I remember most about the Nationals (besides Hartigan) was the fact that Harvard came to the race in two fours. Curt Canning and I had raced opposite each other for four years, and I had supplied him with a rather large wardrobe of Penn crew shirts. There was no shirt betting on this race, but afterwards Curt presented me with his Harvard sweatshirt - a class act I never forgot.”4444 Olympic Trials Jones: “The Small-Boat Trials were held August 30 to September 2, 1968 in Long Beach. Our main competition in the fours-with was Stanford: Dick Lyon, Felix Grauss, Andy Kerr and Bill Stump, with Kent Mitchell as their coxswain. Mitchell had already won an Olympic Gold Medal in the pair-with in 1964,4445 and Dick Lyon had actually rowed in the 1964 U.S. Straight- Four with Ted Nash! And they had a Bronze.4446 “I had been a rower for almost exactly one year, and here I was going against Olympic medalists for a shot at the Olympics. “Our preliminary heat was a ‘row over’ for us. We finished several lengths ahead and were rowing at a 16 stroke per minute rate as we crossed the line.”4447 Purdy: “I remember our boat getting criticism for winning our heat by a large amount, but Ted had given us strict instructions to continue to row hard all 2,000 meters. We could take the stroke down but we had to keep pulling. We finished the race in question rowing 12 strokes per 1225
