In 1965, Harvard's heavyweights used a Swiss-made Stampfli shell, rigged German-style, with the stroke and bow oars on the port side. By this Spring, almost everybody was using foreign shells with German rigs. Everybody, that is, except Navy coach Carl Ullrich. Ullrich's boys use a standard, American Pocock shell, rigged in the standard fashion, with standard American oars.
"We use no gimmicks, no fancy stuff," he says. "I wish everybody rowed that way. Then, it would be men against men, just like it used to be."
It is unlikely, though, that it will ever be that way again. Too many crews, notably Northeastern, have had too much success with ergometers, foreign shells and German rigs to ignore any new developments in either rowing technique or equipment. After Pennsylvania's horrendous experiences with its new Pocock super-cedar shell this year, even the reliability of American equipment may become suspect. Unfortunately for American college coaches, and American college athletic budgets, it has frequently become a matter of innovate or be left three lengths behind.
THAT'S WHY the summer camp was conceived. MIT coach Jack Frailey had argued ever since the Mexico games that maybe it was too much to expect one college, or one club, to have eight oarsmen who could win a gold medal against the kind of competition Europe, Australia and New Zealand was putting up. West German boats had won at Rome, and they had won at Mexico City. Quite possibly, they could win at Munich, too, unless a fairly radical change was made in the selection process for the U. S. team.
And even then, that might not be the answer. America's entire youth rowing program is being scrutinized closely, to find out where the European methods are different, and where they are superior. It may be that the U. S. program is too loosely organized, its goals unclearly defined. If it is so, it will take more than a summer, perhaps even more than four years, to bring about the necessary changes.
The present selection process that Frailey argued for, and the U. S. Olympic Committee decided upon, might work. Parker has the best oarsmen in America assembled at Hanover, and has three months to work with them. If the project fails though, if the U. S. eight loses as badly as it did in 1968, the new process and its advocates will undoubtedly be second-guessed until 1976.
Perhaps the only fair way is to include a handpicked eight among a group of good college and club crews and let them fight it out for an Olympic berth. It is an expensive, and perhaps wasteful alternative, but with the memory of Mexico City lingering, and the spectre of Munich looming up ahead, it might provide one definite answer amid a whirl of controversy.
Perhaps the only fair way is to include a hand-picked eight among a group of good college and club crews and let them fight it out for Munich.