1974 World Championships on Rotsee

On 1 August rowing historian and journalist Christopher Dodd wrote here on HTBS about the 1976 Henley Royal Regatta. Just a couple of weeks earlier, on 13 July, he had written a 'prelude' to that piece on his own blog Rowingvoice. In that article he remembers how he, as the rowing correspondent for The Guardian, and Jim Railton of The Times had arrived at Rotsee in Lucerne for the 1974 World Championships. Dodd's "Hot times in the Cold War" is an entertaining story about Henrietta's bar and the hostess's party trick, the British eight's disastrous race in the semi-final, how the eight's cox, Pat Sweeney, worked his boat through the other nations' crews one by one in the final and how the Championships ended with a tear gas attack by Swiss police trying to break up the athletes' after-race party - while the party band continued to play on.... They don't make regattas like that anymore.

In June earlier this year, a video on the eights final at the 1974 World Championships was uploaded on YouTube, see below. (There are no race commentaries, but close to the 500-metre mark, at 2:32 min., Bachman-Turner Overdrive's "Takin' Care of Business" - released in January 1974 - starts to play and will follow the race to the finish line.)



Please see also HTBS's post "The Story of the Martini Achter" on the American 1973 and 1974 crews, and the 1974 crew's reunion earlier this year.