THE SPORT OF ROWING told me, ‘That was the first time that anybody ever listened to us.’ “They were in a pair-without-cox, and they could beat anything, including a coxed- four, and so they said, ‘Why should we sacrifice our pair for the eight? We don’t think the eight is going to win.’”5011 The Amlongs had good reason to be skeptical. During the spring of 1964, there was another serious crew training next door on Boathouse Row under the College Boat Club banner. Joe Burk had put together an eight including members of his Penn 1962 Eastern Sprints Champion crew and had them stroked by Lyman Perry,5012 stroke of the 1960 Navy Olympic Eight. The crew was big, and they were fast. In fact, they kept beating Vesper all that spring and into the summer, Rosenberg: “Budd and Clark eventually told the Amlongs, ‘You’re either in or you’re out,’ so they decided that they were in.”5013 Budd: “They were talked into joining the Vesper Eight some five weeks before the Olympic Trials in 1964, and the boat instantly became fast. I had rowed for five years at that point, and I remember thinking right away, just as soon as they joined our boat, that that eight was the fastest one I had ever experienced. It was rough as hell. We would soak ourselves because it was a very unstable Italian shell, but it was amazingly fast. “It was a wild ride, but it was the Amlongs who made the boat as fast as it proved to be. Without the Amlongs, and especially without Tom Amlong, there would have been no Gold Medal for Vesper!”5014 Stan Cwiklinski: “Tom Amlong would constantly accuse me of not pulling as hard 5011 Rosenberg, op. cit. 5012 See Chapter 90. 5013 Rosenberg, op. cit. 5014 Budd, op. cit. as he did, and so periodically he would take me out in a pair to make sure. When I would do okay, we would quiet down for a week or so, and then he would start at it again. “I think he still wondered about me in Tokyo.”5015 Stern-Pair Nash: “Bill Stowe from Cornell was a machine. Once he got in motion, he remained in motion until further orders. He was a smart tactician. He could carry out anything he was asked to do.”5016 Emory Clark: “Bill Stowe was everything Ted said he was and more, but Bill Knecht (who rowed the double in Rome with Kelly5017 and was thirty-four years old in ‘64) was every bit as important. He had the smoothest (and fastest) hands out of bow and the most seamless stroke of anyone I ever rowed behind (including Rusty Wailes, with whom I rowed in the ‘58 Yale Varsity and who won Gold in ‘565018 and ‘605019). “As Boyce has so kindly noted,5020 I tended to look out, but it was always to starboard, and it was Knecht’s blade I was watching.”5021 Once the Amlongs had come aboard, that Vesper Eight became a force of nature in 1960s America. Their coxswain, Bob Zimonyi, had grey hair, smoked cigarettes and had defected from the Communists. Emory Clark, Bill Stowe, Stan Cwiklinski and Tom and Joe Amlong would wear their military uniforms to the boathouse, and they looked even more sinister and menacing in 5015 Cwiklinski, personal conversation, 2006 5016 Nash, op. cit. 5017 See Chapter 87. 5018 See Chapter 69. 5019 See Chapter 83. 5020 See later in this chapter. 5021 Clark, op. cit., 2006 1392