THE SPORT OF ROWING “A check on the run will result.”8534 Brian Richardson: “Pressure applied on the footstretcher before the blade entry checks the boat run.”8535 This is not a new idea, and throughout history it has been based upon on real-world experience in boats rather than on lab experiments or doctrine or biomechanics or ideology. Ned Hanlan, the great 19th Century single sculler and father of modern rowing, first realized in the 1870s that pressing on the footstretcher at the end of the recovery caused boat check.8536 Hanlan: “It came across my mind like a flash that the control of the whole motion of the body while in the boat lay in my feet.”8537 Tom McKibbon, 1969 European Doubles Champion and U.S. World and Olympic Women’s Sculling Coach during the 1970s and ‘80s: “The most important thing is not to impede the boat, not allow it to stop, but it’s so easy to make the mistake. “Your recovery must continue until your blade is fully in the water, but so many people end the recovery above the water. That’s why you see men’s boats, they’re strong, and they go fast, but they don’t last.”8538 It is interesting to note that the Van Blom/McKibbon Double rowed their blades in without appreciable splash – see the following page – and they did so without checking the boat. The crucial task at the entry seems to be the avoidance of boat check, not simply covering the blade. There is a link between the two, but it is complicated enough to be subconscious, seemingly metaphysical, and not well understood by even some of the 8534 Roaf & Klavora, Rowing 2, p. 9 8535 Nolte et al, pp. 157-9 8536 See Chapter 13. 8537 Hanlan, p. 3 8538 McKibbon, personal conversation, 2007 world’s most experienced rowers and coaches. Neal Macrossan: “Rowing the blade in doesn’t check the speed of the overall boat system (the hull/coxswain plus oars plus rowers), which, of course, is what must be moved from the start to the finish in order to win a boat race. “Before the oar is in contact with the water, no external force is acting on the overall system. The action of the feet pushing on the footstretchers while the blade is being rowed in is merely an internal force within the overall system, and thus cannot affect the overall system speed.”8539 This is yet another excellent point. However, even though the center of gravity of the system as a whole is unaffected, pressure on the footstretcher (which is an integral part of rowing the blade into the water) does indeed slow the hull at that crucial moment right before the athlete is to begin the pullthrough, just as the backsplashing coach fears. And it is the hull that interfaces with the drag of the water, the bane of all rowers. The feeling one gets within the boat is one of unnatural heaviness at the entry. Rowers call this boat check, and all rowers have felt it. Robert F. Kelley, 1932: “Most races are won by the speed at which a boat travels between strokes. This is the ‘run’ of the boat, and it is often here that a check can enter to spoil things. “A ‘check’ is simply a hanging, a cutting down or suspense, for a fraction of a second, of the forward progress. It is often almost invisible, but never unimportant.”8540 In reality, impeding the speed of the hull is hardly avoided by delaying the turnaround in seat motion until the pullthrough. Research has long established that, 8539 N. Macrossan, op. cit. 8540 Kelley, p. 245 2398
