THE SPORT OF ROWING Rosenberg: “During this period, I was an attorney for Miles Laboratories in Indiana. I met Tibor a number of times, but none of any substance. He was living with his wife and daughter above the boathouse, so whenever I came back to Philly and stopped at Vesper, I would see him.”4963 “Dick and Don Flanigan viewed Tibor as a father figure. He taught them to row the pair superbly. “The eight could easily row at 40spm, and when they were on, they were fast. It was his eight that placed second at the July 4th races in 1962, defeating all comers except the Russians.4964”4965 The Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin (1963): “MacHan has been coaching the Vesper team – considered the nation’s top crew – since he was hired by the club’s captain and benefactor, Jack Kelly, two and a half years ago. He is a big man, thickening around the middle, but not much. His hands are not quite as large as oar blades, and his rumbling, amiable basso (he sounds like male Zsa Zsa Gabor, one oarsman insists) all but eliminates the use of megaphones at training sessions on the river. Most of the time, he speaks softly and gently. ‘I believe in kindness,’ he says. “MacHan (whose salary for teaching about one hundred Vesper members in all is modest compared to that of other sports coaches) laughed when he was asked if his was a fulltime job. ‘Very full-time,’ he said. ‘My boys come in at all hours, seven days a week. I’m always here for them. I like it, but yes, it’s very full-time.’ “The crews row ninety minutes at a stretch. When the river is frozen, they work out inside the boathouse, which Tibor has converted into a makeshift gym, with weights and medicine balls. When the 4963 Rosenberg, op. cit., 2009 4964 See Chapter 98. 4965 Rosenberg, op. cit., 2009 whole squad of thirty is assembled, they have a basketball scrimmage. “‘I need boys who will stay with the club,’ he said. ‘It takes at least two, three years – rowing every day – to make a good oarsman.’ “As he watched the big eight shell knifing upstream through the water, his ruddy face broke into a smile. ‘The boys are good and will give their best,’ he said. ‘I hope we will bring back the big one from Brazil.4966 And some day we may win the World Championship. We have a long way to go, but I am a patient man.’”4967 Lea: “We all got to the Pan American Games in Sao Paulo, Knecht and me in the double, Sy in the single, Tibor and the Vesper Eight, Ted Nash in a Lake Washington Four.4968 The Vesper Eight did not do so well, and to make matters worse, all the rest of us won our events. “That night in our Pan Am Village dorm room, a sad and beaten Tibor slipped a bottle of wine out of his duffel bag for a soporific. Someone gave him a hard time about it and there was a bitter exchange, apparently not the first time that had been an issue. “The Vesper Eight had been an embarrassment, and they weren’t feeling very good about anything. The Amlong brothers especially were not ones to sit on their feelings about a poor performance, and the soft-spoken Flanigan twins, also in that Vesper Eight, were not much of an antidote for the Amlong bile. “In fact, feelings ran so hot between the two sets of brothers on that boat, most of the heat coming from the Amlongs, I think it fair to say, that they’d have to race off in pairs from time to time, sort of the rowing equivalent of putting the gloves on, and 4966 1963 Pan American Games in São Paulo. 4967 Ritter, op. cit. 4968 See Chapter 83 ff. 1384