Hammer Smith Fighting Dirty Business

Who is Hammer Smith?

Hammer Smith is at it again! ‘What?’, you say if you never heard of this hero, whose fight against injustice within the noble sport of rowing has been going on for decades. Rumour has it that he has sworn to devote parts of his life to the destruction of piracy, greed, cruelty, and injustice in all their forms in rowing. No one knows who he is – it’s a assumed he’s a gentleman – but I might have met him once, at least, at the 1987 Rowing World Championships in Copenhagen. I believe that the poor Danes forever lost any chance to organise another really big international rowing regatta as the 1987 rowing show was so terribly unfair due to bad weather which led to every boat racing in lane 1 (or was it lane 6?) inevitably coming in dead last. It became a very unfair regatta, indeed. Now, I have to confess that it has slipped my mind if there ever was any hullaballoo in writing about these championships, but if there was, I am certain Hammer Smith wrote it.

For myself, I and some dear rowing friends from my Swedish rowing club witnessed a day’s races at these Championships from the comfortable area of the marvellous restaurant overseeing the regatta course. Now, the Danes know how to make a dinner last forever, as long as there is enough snaps – and there was at this occasion… When we finally found our way back to Sweden (I vaguely remember a trip with a ferry), it seems our club’s treasurer had bought the USA men’s eight, a Vespoli. I don’t know if the old boy purchased the Americans’ boat before or after the dinner at the restaurant.

But back to our hero Hammer Smith, on 17 June he had an interesting article published in the Rowing Voice. Read and enjoy Hammer Smith’s article about dirty rowing business in ‘Olympic watch: dirty deeds in the docks’.