Of all the questions that come to Doctor Rowing, none is more frequent than “Whatever happened to the Head of the Connecticut?” I hear: “It was such a great regatta.” And: “I remember so well getting out into that downstream current on the Connecticut River in Middletown and feeling like we were flying.” And the inevitable: “Our coxswain was such a liar; she/he would always tell us as we passed the Wesleyan boathouse that the finish line was in sight. Bull! That was the halfway point of the 3.5-mile course.”

It was indeed an excellent regatta, coming two weeks before the Head of the Charles. It was a great tune-up for school, college, and alumni crews seeking a final hard row before fall’s biggest event.

The regatta was begun in 1974 by a group spearheaded by Jack Smith, a legendary figure in Connecticut rowing. Jack had coxed one of the early Trinity College crews and then moved downstream to Middletown, where he decided that high-school students in this small city needed to have a rowing program. Although our country is replete with public-school rowing programs now, in those days there weren’t many. With the help of some like-minded members of the Middletown government and Lions Club, Jack got the ball rolling. Middletown soon had a high-school rowing program and boasted alums like Phil Stekl, Sue Tuttle Hingley, Anne Boucher, and Tim Clifford—all of them National Team oars.

The Head of the Connecticut took the Head of the Charles as its model. The Charles regatta, then in only its ninth year, was fast becoming a fixture on the rowing calendar. After it was launched by Englishman Ernie Arlett at Northeastern, other important coaches—none more so than Harvard’s Harry Parker—embraced the idea quickly that it would be a good idea to make fall rowing more serious. Friday-afternoon beer regattas gave way to more serious training. And crews, no surprise, kept getting faster.

By the end of the ’70s, the Connecticut was established firmly. Doctor Rowing coxed a number of alumni boats, and a few things stand out in my memory.

One: The weather was almost always terrible. Who knows why Mother Nature cursed this event, but it had the misfortune of coinciding with rainy and windy Sundays—so much so that rowing folk began saying,  “Head of the Connecticut bad means Head of the Charles great.” And sure enough, it wasn’t until 1996 that the Cambridge regatta had a nor’easter that canceled it. Talk to anyone with a memory of just three to six years of the Charles and they’ll tell you, “It’s always fantastic. Indian summer. Perfect rowing conditions.” No one ever said that about the poor Head of the Connecticut.

Two: There was the inevitable midday oil tanker on its way to Hartford that came up the course and disrupted the racing and pulled out buoys with its tremendous wake. Although we all marvel at how big an eight is (comparable in size to the ships of Columbus), when a tanker comes alongside, it’s terrifying.

Three: Coxswains did indeed have a hard time finding the finish line. Is there something in a coxswain’s blood that makes her/him feel that just because you’re passing the Wesleyan boathouse from which you launched, and just because the greatest number of people are gathered there cheering, that the finish line is just around this starboard bend in the river? I think we call this phenomenon “The horse smells the barn.” Show me a coxswain in a head race and I’ll show you someone who miscalculates where the finish line is. I know that even the great (sic) Doctor Rowing urged his alumni boat, “Take it up for one last 20. And 20 more! Sorry, we’ve still got a half mile to go. Keep it going!”

If a coxswain has enough credibility to pull this off, you can always say, “Yes, I knew that you guys were getting tired and figured that by deliberately miscounting, I could keep you going, could keep the stroke rating up. Great job, guys.” (Never admit a mistake; it was all part of a calculated plan.)

So what did happen to this beloved regatta? It breathed its last in 2011, when after 37 years, the plug was pulled finally. As happens often, there was no dramatic finale, no smashup of five eights that caused people to declare that maybe it was time to stop. It was mostly entropy; the organizers who had done such a good job for so many years were getting older and were not being replaced by energetic youngsters.

And here we have a lesson about regattas. There is no group more critical to a regatta’s success than the volunteers. When you think of all the positions that need to be filled to pull off a big regatta—the timers, the entries people, the on-the-water referees, the registration-desk workers, the insurance checkers, the program compilers, and so many others—you realize that you need a small army of volunteers. And Middletown is a small town with a rather small rowing community—only one college and one high school.

At the same time that the Head of the Connecticut was losing steam, a new regatta was taking up the slack—the Head of the Housatonic in western Connecticut. It began in 1994 as a Saturday event.

“The idea” said Mitz Carr, who was in on the ground floor of the regatta that was started by New Haven Boat Club’s Norm Thetford and Yale’s Dave Vogel, “was that people who were coming up for the Connecticut on Sunday would like to stop off at the Housatonic and have a nice row before continuing on to the Sunday regatta in Middletown. We will be the warm-up for the HOCT.

“There was some divine intervention. We seemed to get good weather before the bad. And the Connecticut was getting so big that with only one launching area it could take 45 minutes to get on the water. We had a bigger club, hence, more volunteers.”

And so, as one regatta shrunk, another grew. There must be a law of physics that addresses this, but Doctor Rowing is up against a deadline and will let you science types explain it to us.

Wherever you are racing this fall, have a great row!

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That’s right. Despite the prevalence on every level across our country of female coxswains in male boats, in major international events mixed gender boats have not been allowed until now. The first incidence of a national team being coxed by a member of the opposite sex was at the Poznan World Rowing Cup in June. Sam Bosworth coxed the New Zealand women’s eight, becoming the first man to steer an international women’s crew to victory. The Kiwis moved on to the Henley Royal Regatta, where they won the Remenham Challenge Cup, the women’s eights event. Finishing up their European tour, they were second to Romania the next weekend at the Lucerne World Rowing Cup. They are now home training for the world championships in Sarasota.

How did this come about? Dan Kelly, coach of the women’s eight, said that “over the summer Sam was part of a group of coxswains working with the men’s and women’s eights, with selection being their end goal. The rule change came through early in the year, giving us the ability to put the best coxswains in our boats without gender being a restriction. We felt Sam would do a great job with the women’s eight, so he was selected. The women have really enjoyed and respected Sam as a coxswain from Day 1.”

At first, Sam was apprehensive about coxing the women because he had been focused all year on trying to win a seat in the men’s eight. But after the rule change, he realized he had twice as many opportunities to represent his country at September’s world championships. “Over the summer there was talk about gender equality and the rule change, so I started coxing both men’s and women’s boats. I had previously coxed the junior men’s four in 2012 and the under-23 coxed four from 2013-16 and have either won gold or silver in each of those world championship campaigns.”

He quickly fit in. “I have known most of the girls for years and was quite comfortable getting in a boat with them and coxing. It is hard to explain but it just feels right and we get on really well.”

Besides being regularly addressed as “one of the girls,” Sam has not run into many awkward moments. “I have had a few encounters at the World Cups where I have gone to weigh in for the women’s eight and they have been confused as to why I am weighing in for the women’s eight.”

Twenty-three year old Bosworth finds few differences between coxing men and women. “When coxing either gender you have to be confident in what you are doing and direct them well. I find that when I am switched on, the girls are switched on. My mood and behavior rubs off on the crew.” Rebecca Scown, a member of the crew, recalled that “at Poznan, he was calm, we felt confident he had everything covered, and you could tell he was excited to be there, a real racer and ready to drive the boat.” Kelsey Walters, at four, adds, “He’s very calm and confident with every call he makes. He’s always striving to be better at his job and making our jobs easier.”

Sam praises his crew. “The girls bring energy and intent to everything we do and are very responsive to making changes. We have to work very hard, perform as a team, and have the common goal of wanting to get better. I find women do have to be more aware of their technique as they cannot just rely on power.”

Will he stay with the women through the 2020 Olympics? According to Coach Kelly, “As with all seats in the eight, we want the best fit for the seat, and we see Sam as the right person for the role, hence the selection this season. He has made an impressive start and is fully dedicated to his role; he is showing all the signs and characteristics to be a successful and long [-term] international coxswain.”

Have women lost a seat? In this case, yes, but undoubtedly there will women coxing men’s eights going forward. And the 55-kilogram minimum weight will allow slightly larger women to cox. New Zealand head coach Noel Donaldson says that the men’s eight will continue with their male cox, but they do have women coxing men’s boats. “We are quite happy to be gender neutral and select on ability.”

And will there be mixed gender boats in the Olympics? Donaldson says, “When the gender rule change occurred at the FISA Congress earlier this year, the question was raised. Matt Smith, the CEO of FISA, asked the IOC programs director who answered that if this was the sport’s wish then they saw no reason why the IOC would not accept this. We are working to this expectation.”

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Adam Reist avoids that pitfall. “Dare to Be” is a documentary and Reist wisely doesn’t focus on whether the subjects he followed over the course of four years will win or not. Instead, we get a bit of rowing history, some high school rowing, and learn more about the tremendous impact of Title IX and the difficulty of getting back onto the national team as mavericks operating outside the training center model.

The 90-minute film follows the progress and setbacks of three distinct cohorts of rowers: a high school sculler who is the filmmaker’s daughter; a college rower, Abby Young of Yale; and a pair of national-teamers, Sara Hendershot and Sarah Zelenka.

The film’s celebration of women’s rowing is a good thing. But this viewer would have liked to have seen even more on what differentiates these three groups of athletes. One approach would have been to focus more on the national team women who have met with such phenomenal success on the international stage.

Eleven consecutive gold medals in the women’s eight is so stunning that it could easily serve as the centerpiece of a rowing movie. We do hear from their coach, Tom Terhaar, and what he says is appropriately sagacious—like all of the coaches who are filmed—but it made me want to hear from and see the women from that incredible team.

There was a time when any new film that featured rowing would be a cause for celebration. Rowing is incredibly photogenic. The rhythmic motion of the oars is visually exciting. Watching the strong, young bodies of the oarswomen work through their training regimes, one feels tremendous respect for their dedication and their motivation. This is a beautiful activity, but it is a hard activity. And “Dare to Be” indeed features a lot of superb camera work.

Of course, making a film where the principals are young has its challenges. You need to choose someone with the potential to be great. Because it is so hard to attain greatness in a sport like rowing, and so difficult to predict who will grow and find success in ways that are dramatic for the screen, it is a crap shoot. To Reist’s credit, he is not interested in showing just what happens to winners. The narrative works well enough even though each group falls a little short of their goal.

Who is the audience for this film? Well, rowers, one might suppose. But there are a number of moments where we hear athletes talking about rowing that will offer few new insights to current rowers. So the more likely audience is people who have not rowed, perhaps parents or relatives or the habitually curious sports fan. Ultimately, the power and beauty Reist captures so well is “Dare to Be’s” greatest strength—a sublime look at an often difficult path. 

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One such protest came from David Lindstrom, who rowed for New Zealand in the 1970s. “We raced against the DDR from 1972 to 1978. Without the DDR in our races we would have had a world title in 1977 and an Olympic medal in 1976 [in the four]. I personally challenged Theo when he was in New Zealand  after the Berlin Wall came down about drug taking, which he denied as all cheats would. The DDR do not deserve any acknowledgement of their rowing results. They were cheats. End of story.” It is important to note that besides the cheating, many athletes themselves suffered long-term health problems, including organ failure and death.

Without any evidence to the contrary, most rowers naively assumed that our sport was clean.

Olympic gold medalist Martin Cross of Great Britain says competing against the East Germans “was absolutely hellish. They had won medal after medal and I assumed at the time they just trained more and were better athletes and I was doing well just being in the same race as them.” Although no East German oarsman ever tested positive for doping, after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, a huge cache of medical records was uncovered that proved the DDR had systematically doped up to 10,000 of its athletes, rowers included.

Koerner, the technical director of East German rowing (DRSV) from 1962 until 1989, was the man in charge of the program that brought the country of 17 million people 48 Olympic medals, 33 of them gold, from 1968 to 1988. Undoubtedly, there was more to the “Easties’” success than drug use; their sports system included nutrition and technical advances, and scientific monitoring of performance through lactate levels. Lindstrom recalls a conversation after Koerner had moved to the West, “Theo Koerner told me he was instructed to beat the West Germans at all costs to hold his job and as years went on ‘to beat the Western countries’ to show their political system was superior.” Should not those medals at least be doubted or come with an asterisk the way they do in “the steroids era” in baseball?

No allegations have been made that the former East German coaches introduced doping into the training programs for Western athletes. Instead, the professionalism of the DDR, which allowed for a huge volume of training, spread throughout the rowing world.

Today, in order to be competitive, indeed to win in rowing, it precludes having any meaningful job other than rowing.

When Koerner went to Australia after the Wall came down, he helped them prepare for the world championships in Tasmania in 1990. Those worlds, the first ever held in Australia, were successful and reignited what had been a slumbering program. The Aussie Oarsome Foursome won gold in the men’s heavy four to begin a string of four world championship gold medals, culminating in gold in both the 1992 and 1996 Olympics. Koerner was not the coach of those boats, but as a consultant to Australian Institute of Sport he helped engineer a major shift in training.

As Peter Antonie, Australia’s preeminent sculler throughout that era, explains, “When Koerner arrived, our training methods and program changed significantly. We began to do more volume and less intensity; our results showed that it worked.” Antonie, himself, benefited from Koerner’s training program. Although he had already been a world champion in the light single in 1986, in the 1990s with the East German’s influence, his training yielded better and better results. “In the heavy double we went from fourth at the worlds in 1989 to third in Tasmania to a gold medal in the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.”

Antonie concludes that “History tells us that there was a drug factor and that was unfair, but their methods were more than that. They were better supported—cars, jobs, food—and motivated because without success they had nothing.”

Not every East German coach had great success in the West after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Is that because they could not win without doping or the tremendous state support? One who showed that he did not need doping is the most successful coach in the post-DDR era, Jürgen Grobler, who moved from East Germany to Great Britain to become its chief coach. In an interview with the BBC, he said: “I have to live with what went on in East Germany. I was born in the wrong place. It was not possible to walk away.” Steve Redgrave defended his coach: “I’ve known Jürgen for the seven years he’s coached me and if there was any involvement it would be the system and not the man himself to blame.”

No one wants to pillory coaches who, in a corrupt sports administration, were forced to play along with directives from higher-ups.

But for a great many rowers who had to race against doped-up opponents, the bitter taste will never go away. The great Argentinian writer, Jorge Luis Borges wrote, “Olvidar es perdonar”—To forget is to forgive. Let us never forget. We should acknowledge the cheating that went on in the past and not hide our heads in the sand.

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Perfectionism is a trait common to many athletes.

It can contribute to high levels of achievement, but it can also lead to the pursuit of a “perfect” but biologically unrealistic body type. Among dancers, many of whom are perfectionists, eating disorders are prevalent. A survey of 245 dancers from one collegiate dance program and four professional dance companies suggests both collegiate and professional dancers scored similarly on tests that diagnose eating disorders. Dancers with eating disorders reported more anger, depression, and physical discomfort. If only the dancers had gotten help in college (or earlier), they might have been able to enjoy better quality of life as a professional. This same advice applies to all athletes who struggle with food, weight, and body image. The sooner you get help, the quicker you’ll be able to recover. And yes, you can eat well and still remain lean.

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