THE SPORT OF ROWING the doubles along with a Silver and two Bronze Medals in 1974. In contrast to most Soviet crews, GDR crews tended to row their 1,000 meters by coming off the line high but settling quickly to a strong and steady pace, wearing down their opponents in the first 500, and then slowly pulling away in the last 250, often without raising their ratings, as the others faltered, one by one. The technique of the GDR women was identical to that of the GDR men:5884 Classical Technique. The load was very heavy, and legs, backs and arms were used concurrently to accelerate the boat organically and aggressively from entry to release. The Soviet women also rowed with Classical body mechanics, but their GDR counterparts tended to choose a pace that allowed them to hold their form better and make the second 500 their killing field. USA In 1975, after several years of sending trials-winning local eights from Philadelphia Girls Rowing Club, Lake Washington or Vesper Boat Club, the United States selected its first true National Composite Eight in anticipation of the Olympic debut in Montréal in 1976. This brought U.S. women to parity with the selection procedures used by U.S. men. This National Camp Eight comprised of a group of trailblazers, and these were heady times. The women’s movement was gathering momentum. Title IX, mandating parity between men’s and women’s college sports in the U.S., had been enacted just three years earlier, and collegiate women’s crews were popping up all over. The reception to these changes among men, however, was not positive. At places 5884 See Chapter 119. like Yale and Princeton, just the addition of woman students where for generations there had been only men was unnerving enough, but college crew was the ultimate men’s bastion. Now, in boathouses across America, women “were breaking the gender barrier in a very male-dominated sport.”5885 Often the women would be assigned cast-off equipment and banned from the showers, locker rooms and bathrooms. Carie Graves,5886 the formidable 6’1” stroke of the 1975 University of Wisconsin Women’s Varsity: “No one ever said anything critical to me, but I’d hear from my teammates that the men were not happy we were at the boathouse and that we didn’t deserve to be there. “Apparently they looked upon us with disdain. I was not aware of this because it didn’t matter to me what they thought.”5887 Daniel Boyne, author of The Red Rose Crew, A True Story of Women, Winning, and the Water which recounts the events of that summer: “In the years since the events took place, the social landscape in America has changed so radically that it is sometimes difficult to imagine what it was like in 1975, even for the people who experienced those days.”5888 Harry Parker, Women’s Coach Most male rowers of the time just didn’t think that women could possibly be capable of doing what men could do in boats. Time Magazine: “No one was more surprised at their high pain tolerance than Harry Parker, successful coach of men’s 5885 Daniel Boyne, qtd. by Melissa S. Bray, Changing the shape of rowing – The Red Rose Crew, World Rowing magazine, July 2009, p. 9 5886 See Chapter 106. 5887 Melissa S. Bray, Changing the shape of rowing – The Red Rose Crew, World Rowing magazine, July 2009, p. 8 5888 Boyne, Red Rose Crew, p. xi 1648
