THE LONG ECLIPSE OF AMERICAN ROWING Terry: “Harry ultimately decided to leave my boat alone. Who knows what might have happened if I had been put in there? “Part of his decision might have related back to the whole spring seat racing thing between the two of us. Art and I were built the same, same weight,4726 had very close erg scores, etc. and were basically dead even in seat races in fours all spring. “But when we got into the eights, he made the Varsity go faster, and I made the Jayvees go faster. That obviously had to do with our individual styles of swing.”4727 Larkin: “I remember the seat races between Art and Monk. Although the speeds may have been the same, I remember how effortlessly the boat moved with Monk. He had a style of less bang at the catch, and I told Paul Hoffman that they should pick him.”4728 The films which illustrate this chapter document that Evans completed his leg drive at 80% of the pullthrough while films in Chapter 103 show Terry only flattening his legs at 100% of the pullthrough. In the stroke seat, this would have made a noticeable difference to the personality of the boat. Terry: “The real story from a stroke/style/crew point of view was: what do you do when you have to substitute? “To make a crew go, oarsmen are not interchangeable. There are hidden aspects which are not definable and which elude objective measurement that will forever make those who do not get in the seat unhappy, especially if the crew that they do not make does badly. 4726 Greg Stone: “They may have been even in seat racing, but Monk was a former lightweight, lightly built, 175 [79 kg] max. Art was 190 [86 kg] and really solid, much more core strength.” – personal correspondence, 2005 4727 Terry, op. cit. 4728 Larkin, op. cit. “Especially for an eight, you have to give a crew time to make it work. There are always drivers in the boat, guys like Art Evans, who simply are not replaceable at that specific moment.”4729 Interestingly, putting Brooks in the stroke seat instead of Terry represented a substantial change in the opposite direction. He applied his legs much more assertively, flattening them at 60% of the pullthrough. Repêchages Steve Brooks: “Then the evening before the rep, Mike Livingston took sick, vomiting, etc. Thus Jake Fiechter replaced him and remained in the boat for the final. “As I recall, the repêchage was actually the first time we had ever rowed that particular line-up, though Jake had rowed at 3 with the ‘67 Varsity all the prior year.”4730 Penn’s Gardner Cadwalader, 1968 U.S. Coxed-Four: “That summer, Jacques Fiechter had been training at Vesper searching for a way to get to the Olympics, while next door Penn was putting together its coxed-four for the Trials. Jake was a man mountain and boat mover who had the unfortunate timing of graduating from Harvard a year before the Games. “Curiously and ironically, it was Penn’s invitation for him to be the spare for our boat that had Jake raring to go in the wings in Mexico City, ready to slip into his old Harvard boat to help them recover from their various maladies when they needed a spare. “And Jake was more than ready. He had done more of every exercise than any of us all through altitude camp. “I know! I was his roommate.”4731 4729 Terry, op. cit. 4730 S. Brooks, op. cit. 4731 Cadwalader, personal correspondence, 2007 1313
