THE SPORT OF ROWING respected members of local, regional, national or world rowing communities. While often allowing that there is room for individual stylistic interpretation in sculling and that developing good technique is both science and art, the tone of virtually every text soon turns innocently absolute. Drive sequence is virtually always pure Rosenberg overlapping-sequential, and it is stated as fact, not theory or opinion. Approaches to technique that do not conform to the author’s Modern Orthodox vision tend to be described as errors to be avoided at all cost, and specific drills may be prescribed to eliminate them in order to return to correct rowing technique. To cite a typical example, the use of the back concurrently with the legs has been called perhaps the most common error among novice rowers, and readers are reminded that since the invention of the sliding seat, the upper body merely plays a supporting role in the application of power. The legs are the prime movers. Of course this ignores the lessons of international competitive sculling history, of Ned Hanlan, of Ernie Barry, Jack Kelly, Sr. and Jack Beresford, of Joe Burk, of Mackenzie and Ivanov, of the great American scullers of the 1960s, of Karppinen and Kolbe or of GDR Technique. Each of these examples offers an alternative interpretation that has been highly successful. In fact, in all of history, only two athletes have ever won a European, World or Olympic Singles title while sculling in the sequential manner, and they were New Zealanders Rob Waddell6974 and Mahe Drysdale.6975 It is especially noteworthy that Ameri- can how-to books pay no heed to the sweep rowing legacy of seventy years of American 6974 See Chapter 133. 6975 See Chapter 167. collegiate rowing, the best rowing in the world during its time, from Ward and Courtney through Conibear and his successors to Rathschmidt and Lake Washington Rowing Club. Of all the American rowers who were active in 1960 and who participated in the Conibear Era, only a very few – Steve Gladstone, Tony Johnson, Ted Nash and Harry Parker among them – were still coaching at the highest levels into the 21st Century. The sad reality is that with the passage of time, links to the past have been lost for the vast majority of our era’s rowers, coaches, authors and journalists. Inbreeding Rowing has always been a grass-roots sport. For every international rower, there are a hundred or a thousand local rowers, competitive and recreational, who will never get to see rowing beyond their own rivers or lakes. Local rowing communities tend to be insular, with little or no exposure to the wider world of international competitive rowing or to rowing history. In the United States, the technique espoused in most how-to books in the second half of the 20th Century was and remains the accepted norm in places like the clubs on Boathouse Row in Philadelphia and the clubs along the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, not to mention the many prep schools, high schools and colleges across the North American continent. These books continue to speak for and to a large segment of rowing in North America, none of whom question Modern Orthodoxy, none of whom are aware that any alternative could even exist. In the natural world, “when inbreeding occurs, diversity is lost within subpopulations over time as individuals within an interbreeding subpopulation 1952
