THE LONG ECLIPSE OF AMERICAN ROWING and I eventually moved him to 4 and had Mike Hess stroke.”5281 Gluckman: “After losing the Trials, I went home, and then I get a call from Al. “‘The guys in the eight want you to be the starboard spare.’ “Immediately, I called each guy in the four and said, ‘I’m not going unless I have your permission. We’ve been through a hell of a lot together,’ and to a man, to a man, they said, ‘Absolutely, you should go. You need to support the guys, and it’s a worthwhile experience.’ “It was my last year of rowing, and so I went . . . and partly because of my wife. I had been away from her from late March all the way through to the Olympics, and it meant a lot for her to be able go to the stadium and see me march in. “The spares were on our own schedule. I rowed with [6’4” 193cm 209lb. 95kg] Robert Espeseth5282 from the University of Wisconsin.5283 This was his coming out. We trained in Hanover, but we were very seldom with the men’s eight. It was Allen’s wish that we not hang with them. We trained with the women’s crews and the double and the four-with. “We were there to support the eight in case something happened, which it did, but he never used Espeseth, never took one of the most successful collegiate rowers of all time with four IRA championships, never put him in the boat for Shealy after his illness. It started in Hanover, and he should have rested him, but he didn’t. He stayed with Shealy with mono all through to the end of the regatta. “At that point, I think he was so alone, so crippled, looking over his shoulder all the time, and the bitterness coursed through the entire camp.”5284 5281 Rosenberg, op. cit. 5282 See Chapter 132. 5283 See Chapter 106. 5284 Gluckman, op. cit. 1976 Technique Everything that could go wrong did go wrong before the Montréal Olympics. As has been related, the longer camp only increased tensions. Technique was by no means the only factor in play, but the harder they worked and the closer the crew came to Rosenberg’s overlapping sequential ideal, the slower they went. With four new men to blend in since 1975, some of the previous cohesion was lacking. For instance, note the contrast between 2-seat 6’5” 196cm 205lb. 93kg Steve Christensen on the one hand and 6’5” 195cm 196lb. 89kg Chip Lubsen and 6’3” 191cm 196lb. 89kg Dave Fellows in bow and 3 in the film frames on the following page, the former rowing the perfect overlapping-sequential Modern Orthodox stroke still seen today, the latter two rowing closer to the Classical Technique of the 1974 crew. This variation in technique was much more extreme than any differences between Stevenson and Shealy in 1974 and indicates the dissonant blend of approaches Rosenberg inherited in 1976. History was repeating itself – again. Just as with the 1964 Ratzeburg Eight,5285 a World’s best crew was losing its edge on the eve of the Olympics. And just as with English Orthodoxy, Fairbairnism, 1st Generation Conibear, and the followers of George Pocock and Frank Muller, the main technical characteristic of the 1976 crew had become its segmented force application: hit the catch and then pull through in a strong second effort. As in 1975, the crew would tend to get off the line well and then fade off the pace of the crews rowing more economically and continuously through the water. 5285 See Chapter 99. 1455
