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Row, Row, Row Your Boats
| Article
# : |
11903 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1987 |
2,317 Words |
| Author
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Eli Flam
Eli Flam is a free-lance writer who has traveled widely in
Appalachia and is a son of immigrants. |
"Ready ALLL," the starter cried from a motorboat idling nearby. "RRROW!"
Six sleek racing shells shot away from the starting line on Philadelphia's Schuylkill River. Ten-foot oars dug into the water. Coxswains called out the pace to facing crews and conned the two-thousand-meter course. Rowers slid back and forth, straining in their furiously clacking seats.
One more of the 110 heats at the forty-ninth annual Dad Vail regatta, reputedly the biggest competitive rowing event in the world, was off to a frenzied start. This spring, singles, pairs, foursomes, and eight-oared crews participated. A record eighty-five colleges, universities, and service academies from across the United States and Canada weighed in. For three blue-skied days, more than 2,500 men and women rowers and hundreds of boosters took over this park-lined stretch of river.
Many thousands of other folks, young and old, are getting their oars in elsewhere as rowing, America's premier sport more than a century ago, undergoes a renaissance. From Baltimore to Bend, Oregon, the net of club, community, and competitive programs has widened. Single sculling is also on the upswing. The handicapped have gotten into the act, too.
Women's crews were a rarity until the last decade; they were not included in the Olympics until 1976. Nowadays women compete with no less fervor than men. One team, Martha's Moms, got involved in rowing simply because they grew tired of only ferrying their teenaged children to and from rowing workouts and races. They formed their own crew and stared winning races in Master's level rowing events for competitors twenty-five years and older.
New rowing machines are also popular. Cross-country regional "regattas" lead to the hotly contested "Crash-B Sprints - World Indoor Rowing Championships" in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology gymnasium every spring. Some six hundred oarsmen pull hard on ergometer machines, which feature a crossbar hooked to a caged wheel. This year, former Olympic ace Andy Sudduth won the men's open category by three-tenths of a second, with a time of 7:46 for the 2,500 meters. A sixty-year-old chaplain, Hartley Rogers, led the men's veteran division for the sixth straight time. The women's open winner, Barb Kirch, set a record with 8:52.2. Mike Feldser of Hershey, Pennsylvania, a young bodybuilder, regained his crown for the "marathon," when he logged a verifiable 494.2 odometer miles in twenty-four hours - an average of
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