THE LONG ECLIPSE OF AMERICAN ROWING year, started down the chute of green water at a throbbing 46 strokes to the minute, two faster than the older, heavier, more experienced club crew. The crowds along the grassy river banks had fallen silent: the cognoscenti out of respect for titans, the others out of parochial disinterest. “Harvard led by two feet at the Remenham Barrier, which is 2,149 feet up the 1 5/16-mile course. Both crews were timed at a record-equaling 1:48 for the distance, but both were exhibiting slight unsteadiness from the turbulence within the booms. “At the half-mile mark, Harvard was stroking 40 to the minute, but Vesper was coming on, taking a two-foot lead. A few faint voices along the river were shouting, ‘Go Harvard.’ Even at that point, however, John Unkovic, the Harvard coxswain, glancing at the stopwatch taped to his thigh, knew ‘we just couldn’t get in the groove.’ “‘Some days,’ he said later, ‘you get that feeling of swing,4578 and you really go.’ “It was Vesper that went, pulling to almost a length lead at the three-quarter mark, rowing at a powerful and steady 40.”4579 Henley Royal Regatta Record: “Vesper started at 44 to Harvard’s 42, and rowed about one stroke a minute faster than Harvard throughout. Harvard led by a canvas at the quarter mile, but Vesper were level by the Barrier and led by half a length at Fawley and three-quarters of a length at the three-quarter mile. Harvard closed up a little at the mile, but Vesper led by three- quarters of a length at the mile and a quarter. The time at the Barrier equaled the record, and the times at Fawley and the finish were new records. “Vesper won by two-thirds of a length. 4578 See Chapter 164. 4579 Robert Lipsyte, Vesper Eight Beats Harvard by Two-Thirds of a Length in Henley Regatta, The New York Times, July 2, 1965 “Times: 1:48 3:10 6:18”4580 The New York Times: “The winners swept past the Stewards’ Enclosure to a clicking chorus of stopwatches, passed the finish line and slowed only long enough to chuckle and crow. Then they rowed smoothly and neatly to their mooring dock as if they had just taken a light spin up the river. “Gasping and heaving, the Harvard boys sat out in the water, hanging over their training sweeps. “There was none of the rather courteous hip-hip-hooraying that usually follows a race here. The Vesper oarsmen, most of them out of college several years, were grinning when the Crimson dragged into the boat pavilion. “‘I brought all your clippings over with me. I’ll show them to you,’ said one of the Vesper men to a Harvard man. The Harvard man smiled gamely.”4581 It was a very bitter defeat. Rosenberg: “Harry has never gotten over his stinging losses in the ’64 Trials in Pelham Bay4582 and again at Henley in 1965. Those crews were described as the ‘greatest and fastest American crews in a decade.’”4583 Indeed, even after more than forty years, Parker today still feels intensely the 1960s rivalry between himself and Rosenberg. Parker: “What people don’t remember any more is that the next week we went to Lucerne, and we won! We beat the Russians, who came back and won the Silver Medal at the European 4580 Qtd. by Eric Sigward, The Greatest Match Race in the History of the World, Blade on the Feather, Volume IV, No. 1, February, 2004, p. 7 4581 Lipsyte, op. cit. 4582 Hunter Island Lagoon. See Chapter 87. 4583 Rosenberg, personal correspondence, 2007 1271
