THE LESSONS OF 200 YEARS authors’ attempts to explain rowing as a form of exercise involving some subtlety of coordination, but none of their descriptions make any reference to the blade. [except Fairbairn. See above.] “Every coach will attempt to mold the rower according to an ideal that satisfies him, calling for emphasis on this or that movement of the body, and that leads to the fragmentation of the stroke. “What gets circulated is schematicized and overlaid with the pronouncements of National Team coaches, usually of the eights. “I believe a better approach to the rowing stroke is to think reaching from the hips and driving the handle as far as you can with legs, back, arms and shoulders working in concert.”8331 However, even if it may be potentially dangerous for an individual rower to make himself aware of the components of his stroke while he’s rowing, it remains critically important for the true student of rowing to ponder the mechanics of rowing technique in all its forms and possibilities, which even Steve Fairbairn did in meticulous detail.8332 Nevertheless, language often fails us. Ian Fairbairn: “Our use of words is frequently so obviously not understood in the sense we intend that one must suspect that much of rowing controversy is founded on or aggravated by different people understanding the same words to mean different things.”8333 The very words of the great coaches of the present and past represent an additional challenge to the student of rowing history. Repeatedly over the last century and more, coaches have described their ideal 8331 Cunningham, personal correspondence, 2008 8332 See Chapter 19. 8333 Fairbairn on Rowing, p. 35 technique to their athletes, from the launch or the shore, in team meetings and clinics and conventions and in print, and repeatedly their descriptions have diverged materially from the way their crews actually rowed. One must go to the visual records to truly understand the crews of such seminal coaches as Allen Rosenberg, Mike Spracklen and Teo Körner. Other coaches evolved substantially over the course of their careers – coaches such as Charles Courtney, Al Ulbrickson and Tom Bolles, Harry Parker, Thor Nilsen, Hartmut Buschbacher and Harald Jährling – and one must take care not to confuse early, middle and late phases, or make blanket statements. Genealogy of Rowing This book is the first-ever compre- hensive historical survey tracing how rowing technique has evolved over time and who is related to whom. It charts how all of modern rowing relates back to the Classical Technique of Ned Hanlan. English Golden Age rowing under the influence of Steve Fairbairn, the Thames Waterman’s Stroke as represented by Ernest Barry, as well as the American Ward/Courtney/Conibear Stroke, all owed a great deal directly to Hanlan, and together they formed the traditional foundation for all sport rowing today. The Moscow, Ratzeburg, Janoušek and GDR Styles of the mid-20th Century were built upon that Classical foundation, often through the writings of “Stiv Ferbern.”8334 English Orthodoxy and Modern Orthodoxy are major branches off this main trunk of the rowing evolutionary tree. Our heritage is comprised of these techniques, and they represent all the known workable options. Their obvious similarities 8334 See Chapter 79. 2345
