THE SPORT OF ROWING minute, which the local press interpreted as very insulting to the other boats.”4448 Jones: “Stanford won their heat as well. “Race day was a bit choppy, nothing terrible, though. For the final, our plan for the race was to get a good start and then at 750 meters go for a full 250 to break the back of the Stanford team. In previous races, they had had a lull at that point. “We rowed what Ted called ‘essentially a perfect race.’ We hit the 750 meter mark, made our move and left Stanford behind. We finished with two lengths of open water in the fastest time in the U.S. that year. “And Olympian!”4449 High Altitude Training After the Trials, the winning Penn Four picked Jake Fiechter, the Harvard grad rowing for Vesper, as their spare. They were then mandated to train at altitude in Gunnison, Colorado with the rest of the U.S. Olympic rowing squad, but Ted was not made a member of the Olympic staff. Jones: “Gunnison was chosen because it had a large body of water, Blue Mesa Reservoir, and it was at approximately the same altitude as Mexico City, the site of the Olympics. The track and field team got to train at Lake Tahoe, but we were just rowers, after all. “I roomed with Bill, Gardner roomed with Jake, and Hartigan roomed with Tony, 4448 Purdy, op. cit. 4449 Jones, op. cit. which was just like ‘The Odd Couple’. Tony was impeccable in his cleanliness. While the rest of us rinsed our crew clothes in the showers, he washed his in cold water to prevent color fading and shrinkage. John was his opposite, crass and crude, but he was also the oldest of the Penn folks there and better able to cope with Tony’s idiosyncrasies. “At 7,500 feet [2,300m], this was quite different from either Philadelphia or Long Beach. The first day we were there, we ran some wind sprints. It was like learning to breathe again. Air was so thin we couldn’t do nearly what we had been able to do in the past. “Each morning, we would leave our beds, dress and run the two miles to town and back. It eventually got easier, but in those first few days, it was horrible. “In early September when we arrived, it was beautiful. The leaves had not changed, University of Pennsylvania Intercollegiate Athletics 1968 Olympic Coxed-Four Trials Final Alamitos Bay 1 Penn 6:28.6, 2 Stanford 6:37.6, 3 Western Development Clinic A 6:43.0, 4 Western Development Clinic B 6:51.1 I was an Bow Gardner Cadwalader, 2 Tony Martin, 3 Bill Purdy, Stroke Luther Jones, Coxswain John Hartigan 1226
