18 JULY 1908, Page 10

OARSMANSHIP AND THE OLYMPIC GAMES.

ROWING as a sport is common to all nations, and English oarsmen have been engaged in many more international contests than cricketers or football-players. Americans, Frenchmen, and Germans practically do not play cricket, and football is much less popular with them than with us; but Americans, Frenchmen, Belgians, Germans, and Dutch- men all row, and as a matter of fact have all rowed against us. And the Belgians last year and the year before carried off our chief trophy of eight-oared rowing. Ordinarily, rowing does not demand attention like cup-ties and league matches in football and the county championship in cricket, but we should not be surprised if the Olympic Regatta at Henley were thought the most exciting part of the Olympic Games. In the immense Stadium at Shepherd's Bush the interest of the spectator is squandered on a variety of performances going on at the same time, and he may be present while records fall merrily without being excited, or even aware of the dignity of the occasion. But at Henley the races will sweep past under the noses of all who care to stand on the bank, and, more than that, there is a general impression that the traditional style of English rowing is about to be submitted to the most searching test it has ever come under. Are the Belgians our masters in scientific principle? Or were we beaten by them only because we matched against exceptionally good representatives of their style unusually poor representatives of ours?

In these moments of critical anticipation Mr. R. C. Lehmann, one of the most familiar figures in the rowing world, comes out with an attractive work, "The Complete Oarsman" (Methuen and Co., 10s. 6d. net), which we cannot help reading with strict reference to the problem and the struggle immediately before us. Mr. Lehtnann, who is a staunch Liberal, will not, we hope, be offended if we say that his words on style are distinctly conservative in tone. As he thinks that nearly all is for the best in our established style, it follows that his words are reassuring :—

"I have very carefully," he writes, "observed the Belgian crews that have rowed at Henley, including those which won the Grand Challenge Cup in 1906 and 1907. The first point that struck me about them was their admirable uniformity. They had evidently been coached according to a definite system equally well understood both by the instructor and by his pupils. They had mastered to perfection and applied with consummate ability the great theory which inculcates extreme steadiness and good balance of the body- movement forward, and of the sliding that accompanies it. To lead up to this they were very quick and springy with their hands off the chest. Then they moved forward very slowly, so slowly towards the last part that their blades seemed to hang over the water. Their bodies did not swing so far forward as ours, but they took their beginnings firm and clean and with a hearty good will. During the stroke they kept the leg-power strongly and consistently applied, but the bodies swung back less than ours. The finish was hard and the blades came out very clean. The bodies were erect, and all the movements were graceful and easy. No awkward plunging rush checked the even speed of the ship. She kept travelling beautifully. When I compare this style with that of a first-class English crew (for example, with the Leander crew of 1905, which defeated a Belgian crew in the final heat by a length and three-quarters), I note only one serious fault, and that is the comparative shortness of swing fore and aft. All other essentials are there. A genuine swing might entail greater exhaustion, but it would also increase pace, as it did in the Leander crew I have mentioned, by no small amount."

This means, of course, that Mr. Lehmann—and few men have so good a right to judge—thinks that where the Belgians differ from the English style they have fallen away from truth. M. Van der Waerden, the coach of the Belgian crew, discussed recently in the Yachting and Boating Monthly the principles of his rowing faith, and summarised style as "the simultaneous combination of suppleness, strength, elegance, and precision which distinguishes a first-class oarsman from a good average rowing man." We should not wish to express it differently ourselves, particularly when he goes on to insist on the supreme importance of making a hard beginning to every stroke. What we call the "beginning "—the moment when the Wade enters the water—Frenchmen and Belgians much more vividly call "l'attaque." The need for quickness in the "attack" increases in direct proportion to the speed at which the boat is travelling; if the seizure of the water by the oar is not quick enough, the boat "slips away" from the crew,

as the phrase goes. The meaning of this is that an oar is a lever of the second order, the fulcrum being the water. But water is a yielding fulcrum ; it rapidly recedes under the pressure; therefore the action of the blade in the water must be of a swiftness to outstrip the receding water. This is a complicated matter to explain, but Mr. Lehmann has an excel- lent illustration which simplifies it. "Let me ask you," he says, "to imagine yourself opposite to a spoked wheel so arranged as to be capable of revolving freely on its axis in the air. To this wheel you are to impart its rotatory motion.by striking the spokes with a stick. There is no difficulty about the first blow. You can insert your stick with deliberation and proceed to get pace on your wheel. When, however, the wheel has begun to move rapidly your process must change. The slow deliberate insertion of the stick would stop the pace of the wheel, even if it did not cause the stick to be wrenched from your hand. You must strike sharply and rapidly—with a pace greater than that at which the wheel is moving ; and the faster your wheel moves the sharper and more decisive must the blow of your stick be."

In comparing English and Belgian rowing, however, there is something more than a difference in points of style; there is a difference in the rig of the boats. It may be true that twenty-five or thirty years ago the best English crews rowed in boats rigged like the modern Belgian boats; but the best crews of the last few years in England bare certainly rowed with their "work," as it is called, set differently. If the Belgians are right, it is a mistake to have the sliding-seat in such a relation to the rigger that a man can swing and slide his body forward till the oar makes a narrow acute angle with the side of the boat. The oar is working, no doubt, at its greatest advantage when it is directly opposite the rigger—in other words, at right angles to the side of the boat—but obviously it is in that position for only a fraction of a second, and it is worth while for many reasons to keep it in the water while it passes through several less advantageous positions. The question, then, is how far behind the rigger it is worth while to put the blade into the water. The Belgians, and the adherents of their principle in England, argue that it does not pay to row the blade in the water a comparatively long Way before it comes opposite the rigger; it only "pinches " the boat, they say. Experience shows that practice in these matters goes in cycles ; and if the Belgians are not wholly right, it may well be that they are recalling us to the remem- brance of a mean from which we have fallen away through exaggeration.

There is one point in the Olympic Regatta which deserves consideration. The Regatta itself will be a kind of proselytising enterprise. Rowing men have imposed on themselves the strictest definition of amateurism which can, be found in any sport ; the amateurism of oarsmanship has kept itself unspotted from the professional world in a manner which is still held as pedantry over a large part of the Continent of Europe and in America. But this "pedantry" is at least a splendid error in days when sport tends to become a vocation and a spectacle instead of a relaxation. It may easily be said that the Olympic Games themselves are lifting all British sports to a height of spectacularism from which it will be difficult for them ever again to descend. But, on the whole, we think more will be gained than lost because the manage- ment of the games is in the bands of men to whom the theory that amateur sport must be free from all money-making considerations is precious. Is it not a great thing to spread that notion among other nations, and to make friends with them all on those unimpeachable terms? And one may think it worth doing, even if it be granted that the internationalising of sport has numerous disadvantages. Henley Regatta, to take only one example, has changed its whole character since the introduction of regular foreign competition. British honour has to be defended by what may be called syndicated crews, and the crews of all the smaller clubs and Colleges, which after all are the nurseries of rowing, and require unremitting care like all nurseries, stiffer because their best men—their backbones—are taken away to row in the national crew.

Probably it is impossible, because it is too late, to change the

character of Henley Regatta back to its old domestic form. But let us at all events say this much, that the influence of

the internationalising of sport, of which these Olympic Games are the most remarkable example ever seen, requires to -be watched and guided jealously.