THE SPORT OF ROWING FISA 1976 Video Penn Elite Center Men’s Coxless-Pair 1976 Olympic Silver Medal, Île Notre Dame Bow Mike Staines, Stroke Calvin Coffey 0°, +25° to -10°, 0-10, 0-10, 0-10 Classical Technique Early leg motion, late arm motion. Center, gave shelter to another pair trying to qualify for the Olympics. U.S. Team selection procedures were similar to those of 1972, the eight coming from a camp run by Allen Rosenberg, the coxless-four from a camp at Vesper Boat Club run by Dietrich Rose, and the rest by Trials. The various Vesper aspirants asked Dietrich not to drag out the process, to make cuts quickly so they would have a chance to form coxed-fours and pairs for the Trials. Mike Staines, Luther Jones’ pair-partner in Munich, was cut early when he became ill and lost a seat race. Staines: “I thought to myself, ‘That’s it for this year. That’s it for my Olympic hopes.’”5987 Calvin Coffey, stroke of the North- eastern 1972 and 1973 Eastern Sprints champs, was also cut, but his situation was a bit more complicated. Coffey: “Dietrich and I had come to an agreement to collaborate in making pairs, and I had moved to Philadelphia and set up shop. The first boat went to the Jonik sisters at Vesper. They had been the U.S. Women’s Pair the previous year in 5987 Staines, op. cit. Nottingham. The second boat went to the Borchelt brothers at Potomac Boat Club. Mark had rowed with me in the 1975 U.S. Coxless-Four from Vesper. “I was working on the third boat, an orange pair we called The Pumpkin, when my agreement with Dietrich fell apart. It was bad, and meanwhile he was running the camp I was trying to make. It would never have worked, and I was cut. “I approached Mike and asked him if he would like to try to make a pair on our own. He agreed, and we kept rowing The Pumpkin out of Vesper while Dietrich and I tried to extricate ourselves from our previous business arrangement. “We completely organized our training ourselves, except that one night, since we had no idea what we looked like, we asked Ted to take a look at us from the launch.”5988 Staines: “My recollection is that we were not going very well, didn’t seem to have any punch and no discipline. We were getting absolutely no help at the time from Dietrich or Woody Fischer, his camp assistant, so I think it was a good thing that Ted came on board. 5988 Coffey, op. cit. 1680
