THE SPORT OF ROWING U.S. club rowing alive while being part of the U.S. Camp system. He was the ‘selector’ of the Camp boat, though it was not an open camp. It was by invitation-only from Ted and the other U.S. coaches.”6544 Nash: “The seat racing was done in the non-current lanes at Princeton. It was intense, and a strong crew evolved from it all.”6545 Technique After a year working in Philadelphia, the 1991 crew with its stern three still intact had evolved on its way to the ‘92 Olympic year. There was more leg compression at the entry, and backs no longer dominated legs during the pullthrough. Ted Nash’s signature back swing became the strong, unifying feature of the stroke, and leg and back coordination was closer to that of the ‘86-‘88 and ‘88-‘89 generation crews. None of Ted’s long line of Penn A.C. fours had broken their arms particularly early, but only Porterfield, Manning and McLaughlin in ‘91 had ever broken their arms noticeably late. This idiosyncrasy had disappeared by 1992, and with it went the -40° layback of 1991. With the leg, back and arm motion more integrated toward the release, the second half of the stroke looked more natural. McLaughlin: “The change between ‘91 and ‘92, with Mike Porterfield going and Doug Burden coming in, you took out a third of the Northeastern influence, but all of us had been very familiar with the Korzeniowski style as well, and the sequential legs-back-arms is definitely how Kris talks. One of his favorite coxswain calls during a race is ‘Legs! . . Swing! Legs! . . Swing!’ That’s where we were getting our rhythm in ‘87 and ‘88, generating the 6544 McLaughlin, op. cit. 6545 Nash, op. cit. power with the legs and then just completely extending that momentum through the swing into the quick arm snap. “With Ted, if your catch is quick enough so that you are not losing any of the effectiveness of your quick legs, all of a sudden you’ve encountered resistance where in your wildest dreams if you wanted to just slam your legs down, you couldn’t because from the very first instant of the catch, you’re engaged with your back so that it’s supporting the legs with the beginning of its swing, but your back swing really picks up speed when your legs are half-way down so that you’re not losing the connection and the momentum. “The coaching that went on between ‘91 and ‘92 was to tie the pieces together and continue to leverage. “When you’ve got Tom Bohrer in your boat, you are foolish not to take advantage of creating as much force as you possibly can because he was by all accounts one of the most powerful rowers in the world during those years, and having him engage his power at the catch was key to picking the boat up and moving it along. “I remember a lot of coaching with video and repetition to get the quick catch with some but not a ton of backsplash. Ted, Kris and Buzz had all stressed the need for minimal but some backsplash. If you’re getting a lot of backsplash, you’re trying to jam it in too hard when you are heading up the slide. When you miss and you get frontsplash, you’ve obviously missed the catch, and your legs are becoming less effective. “Ted helped us a lot by getting us to visualize two posts in the water, so you would put your blade between the posts, and that would lock it in. The posts are there, and they are stationary, and there’s no way around them. They prevent you from sliding your blade into the water, either going back and getting backsplash or going forward and 1810
