THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT Emory Clark, 1964 FISA 1976 Video Joan Lind (background) half a length down on Christine Scheiblich with 200 meters to go in the Olympic final. 1 GDR 4:05.56 2 USA 4:06.21 3 URS 4:10.24 4 BUL 4:10.86 5 NED 4:18.71 6 HUN 4:22.59 Post Mortem McKibbon: “If it had been flat water or even water, it was whomever’s race to take. I’m not going to say that trading lanes the next day, Joan would have beaten her, but it was up for grabs, and everybody knew it, and of all the people who knew it, probably Christine did, too. “As a coach, I pretty much know where my team’s going to end up, and if they’re going to lose, I’m there at the dock, and if they’re going to win, I’m a couple of fields over.5868 I had Joan to win, and I didn’t go to the ceremony. I stayed way back. It’s just a quirk I have, so I didn’t see.”5869 Olympic Eights Gold Medalist:5870 “America’s first woman to win a Silver Medal in rowing was the U.S. rowing world’s brightest moment. If Joan was beautiful off the water as her face in repose radiated happiness and pride, her race, sculling all alone in Lane 6 against the wind and chop, was the sort that brought a lump to the throat and made it hard to cheer when one wanted to most in that heartbreaking last 250 meters. “Only .65 second separat- ed her from the Gold. What if she had been in the relatively calm Lane 2 where the East German rowed? What if . . . ?”5871 McKibbon: “Emory Clark used to say, ‘Never hold hands with a hand that holds an oar.’ I thought it was funny that he later wrote what he wrote about Joan, how much attitudes had changed, not just Emory, who was so hard core, but how Joan had pretty much changed the whole respect for women in rowing in America. “There was a time there when our National Women’s Team was so much better that our National Men’s Team . . .”5872 Lind: “I hardly got to speak to Christine, who I really wanted to speak with. I exchanged shirts with her, and that was it. She really didn’t show any desire to talk to me at all. And I don’t know [if] she was being watched and couldn’t talk to me or didn’t think she could. But I didn’t speak to her or the Russian girl. The Dutch girl didn’t show much desire to talk either and 5868 McKibbon learned this from Rusty Robertson. See Chapter 120. 5869 McKibbon, op. cit. 5870 See Chapter 107. 5871 Clark, Olympic Notebook, The Oarsman, September/October 1976, p. 22 5872 McKibbon, op. cit. 1643
