U.S. Women Rowing Calendar

On 5 October I wrote about the Canadian women's calendar 'We Row: The Canadian Women of Canadian Rowing' (click here to go to that entry), and now the U.S. Women are offering their calendar 'Power and Grace 2011 Portraits of American Women Rowers Fundraising Calendar'. If you like to support the U.S. Women, you can pre-order their calendar at a special price, $9.50 (plus shipping & handling: USA $3.95; Canada $4.95; rest of the world $7.25) until 15 November. After that date the calendar price will be $19.95. Hurry up to order your copy by clicking here.

Age And Experience In Rowing

HTBS’s special London correspondent Tim Koch writes in an e-mail from this morning that he has found two articles with “two contrasting stories of age and experience in top level rowing. One concerns the comeback of 38 year old Greg Searle [on the left] (1992 Olympic coxed pairs champion) at the World Rowing Championships which started today. His aim is to row at the 2012 Olympics at the age of 40. Searle is interviewed by Martin Cross in yesterday's The Guardian (click here to read the interview).

The other is a story that I missed at the time but have since found on the Henley Royal Regatta web-site, ‘A Henley win after just ten months’. It reads:

Henley’s finals day was a dream come true for the Huskies’ powerhouse, Ryan Schroeder. Not only did the rookie rower help power his crew from Washington University to an emphatic victory over Nereus’ students, of Holland, on the 4th of July but Schroeder won his coveted Temple Challenge Cup medal with a mere 10 month’s rowing experience behind him. ‘I only made the switch from baseball to rowing this September’, said the exhausted six-man. ‘This is better than my wildest dreams. I only started rowing in September. I’ve walked straight into a great boat and it feels fantastic to have brought it home on the 4th of July.’"

See also HTBS 12 April 2010 for more on Greg Searle’s comeback and earlier rowing career.

Mallory's 'The New Generation Of U.S. Scullers'

American rowing historian Peter Mallory is working with an incredibly task and project called The Evolution of the Rowing Stroke. The other day Row2K posted another chapter of Mallory’s work, called The Next Generation of U.S. Scullers. Read this chapter by clicking here.

World Championship Medals?

So, who are we to watch at the 2010 World Rowing Championships on Lake Karapiro which begins on 31 October? The International Rowing Federation, FISA, has some ideas. On their web site is a summary of the 14 Olympic class events, including the four blue ribbon events (men’s and women’s single sculls and men’s and women’s eights), with an overview of the rowers to watch in those boat classes. Read FISA’s summery here.

Boyne On Shooting 'The Social Network' 8

Dan Boyne of Harvard University continues here his story, published on Row2k, how he helped the film crew of The Social Network to find suitable locations for the rowing scenes. Part 8.

The Boat Race's Crews' First Video Blogs

“The University Boat Club squads for the 2011 Xchanging Boat Race have been announced and they include one of the biggest concentrations of home grown oarsmen and undergraduates for many years,” it says on The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race’s web site. Read the whole article by clicking here.

The crews have also started their so called crew blogs:

Here is Oxford’s first video blog:



Here is Cambridge’s first video blog:

Tim Koch On Andy Holmes: 'A Man Of Modesty'

The news that Andy Holmes died on Sunday, 24 October, only 51 years old, came as a shock to the Rowing World. HTBS’s special London correspondent, Tim Koch, writes:

In the tributes to Andy Holmes there have been many comments on his modesty, something rare in a top athlete. There has been particular reference to the story that one of his daughters only found out that her father was a double Olympian from a school book. I witnessed an example of his self-effacing attitude at a reception given by the Mayor of Hammersmith and Fulham held to mark the centenary of the 1908 Olympics (which was staged in the borough). Many British gold medallists from the 2008 Beijing Games were feted as guests of honour but Andy was there only as one of the representatives of Furnivall Sculling Club where he was involved in simple club level coaching. He wore no special Olympic blazer or tie and made no mention of his wins. It amused me to see that he was the most successful Olympian in the room but most people present did not know this, including, I suspect, most of the 2008 medallists. Victorian sporting amateurs held that ‘modesty is inseparable from true merit.’ This was certainly true in Andy’s case.

Rowing Champion Andy Holmes Dies, Age 51

Earlier today the news came that British oarsman Andy Holmes, who was born on 15 October 1959, died last night, 24 October, age 51. It was reported last Monday that he was taken ill of what the doctors thought was a bacterial infection called the Weil's disease. Holmes began to row when he was 12, and won the Thames Challenge Cup at the age of 19. At the 1984 Olympic Games, he won the gold medal in the coxed four, together with Steve Redgrave, Richard Budgett, Martin Cross, and cox Adrian Ellison. Holmes and Redgrave also took the gold in the coxless pair and the bronze in the coxed pair at the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988.

Read Rachel Quarrell's article in today's The Daily Telegraph by clicking here.

Find The Daily Telegraph's obituary here.

Read Peter Nichols's obituary published in The Guardian, here.

Martin Cross, Holmes's former team mate, remembers him in The Guardian, here.

Here is a short clip from Andy Holmes's and Steve Redgrave's race in the Seoul Olympic Games, final coxless pair with 1,000 metres to go:




Click here to read what British Rowing is saying about Leptospirosis or Weil's Disease.

2010 HOCR Results

Click on this link to get the results from yesterday's and today's Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston.

World Championships On Lake Karapiro, NZ

Soon it is time for the World Rowing Championships on Lake Karapiro in New Zealand, 30 October – 7 November. The International Rowing Federation, FISA, said the other day that slightly more than 800 athletes will race on Karapiro, where the Championships were also held in 1978. The USA has the largest team with twenty-four crews. Click here to get to the official World Championships site.

Below is a video clip about the Championships and the New Zealand rowers:



Here is a video clip about the British rowers and a short interview with Jürgen Gröbler:



And here is a clip from U.S. team member Megan Kalmoe's blog at their last practice at Princeton:

Rowing - The Preppiest Of Sports?

One of this year's sponsors of the Head of the Charles is the American clothing company Brooks Brothers who held a cocktail party in one of their stores in Boston the other day to celebrate the re-publishing of the Official Preppy Handbook from 1980, now as True Prep. It seems rowing now is the preppiest of sports, which Brooks Brothers shows in an ad, which you can view below. This inevitably brings to mind the Gant Rowing Race which was held in Stockholm in May between two of Sweden's best known private schools. In this case the Gant clothing company sponsored the event and dressed up the crews which can be seen in the 'race video', which, of course, was more like an ad for the company. With one major difference, the youths rowing in the Gant race video are actually the real rowers, not hired models.

Here is the Brooks Brothers video:



And here is the Gant video:

2010 HOCR

Here is a great link with information if you are going to Boston this weekend to see the 46th annual Head of the Charles Regatta. If you cannot go, there is a live webcast from the rooftop of the Cambridge Boat Club. Click on that link and you are there!

Boyne On Shooting 'The Social Network' 7

Dan Boyne of Harvard University continues here his story, published on Row2k, how he helped the film crew of The Social Network to find suitable locations for the rowing scenes. Part 7.

'Ready all!' With Buster Keaton

Are you getting tired of all the hoopla about the movie The Social Network? Or you are just tired after work and would like to relax and maybe get a good laugh at something rowing related? You came to the right place! Click on the film clips below from the film College from 1927, starring Buster Keaton, who also directed it together with James W. Horne. This is an early 'rowing movie'. Enjoy!

Boyne On Shooting 'The Social Network' 6

Dan Boyne of Harvard University continues here his story, published on Row2k, how he helped the film crew of The Social Network to find suitable locations for the rowing scenes. Part 6.