Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1922-07-05
CORNELLSDEFEAT
STILL IS TALK Of
ROWING CIRCLES
Old Question of Pace Oarsmen
Can Stand Is Raised
Again.
Bv WALTER CAMP
oy NE Y NV"
speciai Correspondent of The Great taHs IribuHs
Ga-udsht la2a by Tie Great Ealls Irthupe

Special Correspondent Of The Great Fails Tribune.
New York. July 3.-The great talk
today in rowing circles is what hap
pened to Cornell on the Hudson. The
real truth is that the race as rowed at
r~oughkeepsie was not the kind that
the Ithacans like. Whether they used
good Judgment is part of the question,
but the real meat lies in the fact that
there was no place at the front for a
crew of supernen who could stand a
continued high beat.
Rowing is and always will be the
sport of mystery. Theorists start in
and argue for a time in favor of a
low, slow stroke. Then as a crew
with a high beat comes to the front
thew begin to wobble in their opinions
and retreat to matters of form. Then
suddenly a crew that violates all the
canoes that they are laying down. in
some mysterious manner makes the
boat travel up to the head of the pro-
cession and then the theorists begin all
over again.
The writer recently came across q
clipping published a few years ago re-
cording that as Il result of exhaustive
physical tests. Wisconsin had deter
mined to abandon rowing altogether
and that the Navy would not partici-
pate in any boat racing of over two
miles. Have the hearts Of young men
changed. or what has happened? At
any rate. the Nays change of heart
has given us two glorious races OF the
Hudson and has set up a three-mile
,1.A,I .kat all he n -1 - boat
Moreover. with n exception, the
men who rowed to victory in the Navy
shell in 1921 were not sufficiently in
jured by that three-mile struggle as
not to be a pretty sound. powerful or
ganization a year later when they an
swered challenge after challenge from
Cornell and finally rowed down that
magnificent Washington eight in the
last half mile. What if the writer
said it is the exception of one man.
he means that seven out of the crew Of
eight rowed in both races.
But the really important fact that
was demonstrated beyond peradventure
at P~oughkeepsle this year. was that a
crew to win in such class must be able
to raise the beat of its stroke and keen
it at what should be considered a high
rate if they are to be in the hunt
at all.
Moreover. it has been proved that
men of the right physique and right
training car row a high stroke not only
for two miles but four miles.
To revert once more TO the mystery
Of rowing. Cornell used to come ia
the Hudson and win with crews which
rowed a fair part of the race at 2S to
80 and never above b. A Yale crew
of many years ago had a high stroke
close to 40. broke all the harbor rec
ords that had been made at New Ha-
ven for nearly a full minute. Penn
~sylvania, under Ellis Wark. sent A
crew to Poughkeepsie the oarsmen OF
which apparently rowed the first part
of the stroke in the air, and were
criticized before the race as having
almost every fault known and yet they
finished first.
The victory Of the Navy over Wash
ington was almost parallel to that in
one of the heats at Henley in 1914
when the Harvard crew won the blue
ribbon in the English rowing world
That heat was the one in which the
Harvard crew defeated the German
eight. The latter made its bid by rails
ila the stroke in the last 100 yards.
The Navy crew in the HON stretch
at P~ougbkeepsie saw Washington cont
in the same fashion and saw them ac-
tually slip into the lead before Fraw-
ley. the Navy strokr. could drive his
men hard enough to hold them. But
when he got going that eight had the
power, determination and high stroke
TO finally whip into sl,bmersion the
grand crew from Seattle.