THE WINDS OF CHANGE “‘It’s curious,’ recalls [Vesper Boat Club Coach] Allen Rosenberg2478 of Parker’s days training out of Vesper. ‘He hung up his uniform on his locker, on a hook, and I can truthfully say that’s how he impressed me. No wrinkles, no creases, a military uniform with all that denoted. He was absolutely straight, straight laced, straight living, and very, very impressive.’”2479 Technique Joe Burk coached Harry by sculling alongside him in his own single, but rather than adopting the technique that Joe had rowed in 1938, Harry chose to scull closer to the sweep technique that Joe had taught him at Penn. Parker: “There was very little coaching between us. There was just pulling against each other.”2480 At 6’0” 183cm 172lb. 78kg, Harry was not nearly as large as Joe or the top two scullers of his own day, Vyacheslav Ivanov2481 at 6’2” 188cm 187lb. 85kg and Stuart Mackenzie2482 at 6’5” 196cm 227lb. 103kg, but he was superbly muscled, as can be clearly seen in the accompanying newsreel frames, and his force application was visibly aggressive. Despite concurrent initiation of legs, back and arms, the very strong leg drive led to an inevitable slight force discontinuity after the initial burst. This was an evolution of his technique in the Penn Eight. The second part of his two-part pullthrough was made up of an aggressive back swing to a bit more layback than he had gotten in the Penn Eight. 2478 Parker’s later coaching career would be inextricably linked to Rosenberg’s for decades. See Chapter 107 ff 2479 Lambert, op. cit. 2480 Parker, op. cit. 2481 See Chapter 86. 2482 Ibid. The overall impression was one of assertiveness rather than of elegance, of strength rather than swing, and the force discontinuity marks the demarcation line between Kernschlag with an organic pullthrough and mutant two-part Kernschlag. Harry was a sculler with a two-part pullthrough. In 1959, Harry won the Pan American Games, and then he reached the final of the Diamond Sculls, where Australian Stuart Mackenzie, a World Champion sculler but an unpopular man at Henley due to his boorish behavior, toyed with Harry, dawdling and then spurting, before beating him “easily.” In 1960, Harry won the U.S. Olympic Singles Trials, still training alongside Joe Burk. Steve Gladstone, who later coached under Harry at Harvard early in both their careers, recalls the competition between his two good friends. “Harry was less than 175 pounds. Joe was 200 pounds. Even in 1960, Joe was still a monster!”2483 Twenty-two years after his record- setting performance at Henley, legend has it that Joe Burk remained the fastest single sculler in the Americas. According to Allen Rosenberg, it’s no legend. “I saw it myself. He used to row up the Schuylkill off Parker’s bow. He had on his work gloves with the fingers cut off.”2484 Rowing News: “They were like twins. Clean living guys, hard, hard workers, precise in their manners and the way they worked out on the water.”2485 Parker agrees about Joe’s faster speed during the year they spent training together. 2483 Gladstone, personal conversation, 2005 2484 Rosenberg, personal conversation, 2004 2485 Qtd. by Ed Winchester, Deconstructing Harry, Rowing News, December, 2004, p. 48 689
