THE LONG ECLIPSE OF AMERICAN ROWING Technique could also be extremely misleading in its apparent reasonableness and simplicity, which reminds me of the following anecdote: Rosenberg: “Efforts to dissect my stroke style are best exemplified by an encounter at Henley in 1996 with Dick Grossman of Dartmouth. He called me over to watch his crew row by and said, ‘They row just like your crews.’ In all innocence, I asked him which crew was his, for I could see nothing that resembled anything like my preferred style. “This to me is so typical of mere observers in emulating someone’s style. What they do is what they hope will lead to what they want to copy. It ain’t always so. Key parts of the stroke invariably differ, and they build on that difference so that in the end they have a giraffe instead of a camel.”5090 Imagine how crestfallen Grossman must have been. Under the guiding hand of Allen Rosenberg himself, his technique won the 1964 Olympic Gold Medal and the 1974 World Championship, but not every coach who has attempted to follow the Rosenberg lead has accurately reflected Rosenberg’s original intent, and as the years passed, even Allen Rosenberg himself could not find success every time he attempted to apply it. Explosive Contradiction Analysis demonstrates that a literal reading of Rosenberg’s writings does not match the force application technique of Rosenberg’s two great championship eights. John Van Blom, Long Beach Rowing Association5091: “What Rosenberg said didn’t jibe with what they did.”5092 5090 Rosenberg, personal correspondence, 2010 5091 See Chapter 88. 5092 Van Blom, personal conversation, 2007 Innumerable times Allen has clearly and succinctly described his Kernschlag- sounding approach to rowing, but as with Ted Nash at Lake Washington Rowing Club,5093 frame-by-frame analysis of the 1964 and 1974 Eights reveals a Schubschlag pullthrough. Again, this fact is not widely known – not then, not now. Peter Klavora has written of the Rosenberg Style: “The hammer-blow-like leg drive initiated at the beginning takes the slides away from the front stop, leaving the body trailing the slide throughout the stroke. [my emphasis]”5094 In describing their personal interpretations of Allen Rosenberg’s approach, many coaches have indeed referred to “explosive” leg drive as part of the Rosenberg Style, but Allen Rosenberg has emphatically stated to me more than once that he has never, ever used the word “explosive” to describe his technique. In later years, the Rosenberg-coached USA Eights of 1975 and 1976 did indeed devolve toward increasing emphasis on segmented-force catches, enough so that in the 1977 edition of the GDR manual, Rudern, Ernst Herberger categorized the Rosenberg Style, as he observed it, as Kernschlag.5095 But it had not been true of the 1964 or of the 1974 Gold Medal boats! Sequential or Concurrent? Allen’s writings are clear that the legs alone must begin the propulsive phase of the stroke. If they do not, if the back “participates” at the entry, “less speed is 5093 See Chapter 84. 5094 Klavora, International, p. 25 5095 Herberger, p. 74 1407