THE SPORT OF ROWING for in terms of responsibility – as one person put it, they made sure they gave him all the rope he needed to hang himself.”5288 Vespoli: “Many of us in the ‘74 boat had also been in the U.S. Eight in 1973. Steve Gladstone put that boat together, and we had real speed, but everything went wrong for us during the ‘73 race in Moscow.5289 We were all pretty frustrated and had something to prove the next year. “We didn’t pay a great deal of attention to Allen’s technical coaching during his first year. We already knew how to move boats. “In the second and third years under Allen, we inevitably adapted closer and closer to his teaching . . . and we got slower and slower.”5290 Allen Rosenberg himself attributes the loss of speed to factors other than technique: “In 1976, Ken Brown had spent the year studying in England, and Mark Umlauf was one year too early to fill Norelius’ seat. He was bullied and ostracized and eventually performed well below his capabilities. Mike Vespoli never performed as well as he did in 1974. Truth be told, there was a lot of second guessing because many of the guys believed they knew exactly what they needed and wanted to do so on their own. “The lack of cohesiveness in ‘76 was caused in large part by having to race with four spares and replacements after the mutiny, but it is not true that were going slower. Despite everything, when Shealy was well and at stroke, we were fast enough to make the top four. “I sought out Dr. Gideon Ariel5291 to do high-speed camera work for isolating body 5288 Wood, op. cit. 5289 See Chapter 111. 5290 Vespoli, personal conversation, 1999 5291 Former Israeli Olympic discus thrower and world-renowned authority in biomechanics. According to the article Gideon Ariel and His Magic Machine, Sports Illustrated, August 22, movements, as he had done with international shot-put and discus men, but I could not proceed without paying him. Finally, I was able to have a professor at Brockport (NY) State Teachers College stay with us at Hanover in May, 1976 to film the crews at ultra high-speed and correlate that footage with speed markings. It showed that the eight with a healthy Shealy stroking was moving at better than 5:30 speed.”5292 Shealy: “I don’t recall any conscious change in Allen’s technique during those years. His off-the-water stuff got more bizarre, like the tai chi, the Washington Redskins trainer whose mantra, ‘It’s the muscles that do the work,’ to this day provokes endless howls, and rolling an orange across a table and snatching it just before it fell off to simulate the quick-catch hand movement. “He was a wreck that year and it took its toll on morale.”5293 Rosenberg: “Non-coaching factors dominated the 1976 effort. We had no financial or logistical support from the USOC, and the rowing political power was in Cambridge5294 at that time.”5295 Vespoli: “We [the four that left the camp] couldn’t win the Trials, and the eight didn’t make the final at the Olympics. Something very basic had to be wrong. Whatever it was, how we rowed technically, motivation, the lack of competition in the 1977, “If you want to run faster, throw farther or jump higher, call on this electronic mastermind, who will photograph you in action, digitize the moving parts of your body and feed the data into a computer, which will turn out reams of athletic advice no human authority can provide.” 5292 Rosenberg, op. cit. 5293 Shealy, personal correspondence, 2005 5294 a thinly-veiled reference to Harry Parker and NAAO President Jack Frailey. 5295 Rosenberg, op. cit. 1458
