| |
Licences: Competitors are reminded that if they are not in possession of a licence number at the time of making a regatta ENTRY and not the date of the event, they are likely to have to pay for a Day Ticket. Sandy Walker, Convenor of Racing Control, also notes that a two week turn round is required to ensure receipt of a licence number in time.
Tom Findlay: George Parsonage sends the following note about the death of Tom Findlay.
"Tom Findlay who died recently after a long illness was my coach for many years and a good friend of myself and my father. I have many happy memories of Tom cycling up the river bank an array of stop watches around his neck and a megaphone in hand. Tom served Clyde and Clydesdale Clubs in several Committee positions."
The following is reprinted from the the Steel works where Tom spent a good deal of his working life.
Rowing Down The Clyde, (Extract from Colville’s Magazine 1966, Page 22 – 25)
Tom Findlay is assistant works fuel engineer at Clydebridge, and his hobby is rowing. He says it demands more from its devotees than any other sport. Twenty years ago rowing would have been regarded as an unlikely ploy for a Scottish youngster: it was an English sport then and only a handful of enthusiasts went in for it seriously. Today the schools have taken it up, many of them have part-time rowing masters, and the Glasgow Schools' Rowing Club alone has over a thousand members. Competitive rowing for schoolboys is extremely popular.
But, says Tom Findlay, the numbers who continue to row after they have left school are not much higher than they ever were. At school, rowing tends to be a second port (football and rowing is the normal combination) and taken seriously it is so time-consuming that it is nearly always dropped when schooldays are over. This is not surprising. A top-class performer has to train every day of the week, winter and summer.
The oarsman's year begins in September, after the summer competitions are over. He goes down to the boathouse on the Clyde at Glasgow Green and trains indoors, going through a strenuous routine of exercises with weights and a carefully worked out schedule of press-ups, chin-ups on the bars, and other exercises. If he is an ordinary inter-club competitor he probably does this for one or two hours three nights a week, and at the weekends does another hour or two and then rows about eight miles. If he is in the national or international class he trains every night and rows at the weekend as well. When the evenings grow lighter the indoor training is reduced or stopped, and morning and evening rowing takes its place. Anyone who cares to get out of bed and go down to the Green between six and seven any morning when it is light enough will find crews training hard on the river.
"The really top crews are out seven mornings a week, plus five nights at the boathouse," says Tom. "There's no time for anything else. Love-life is non-existent. In fact it surprises me how university students manage to row and study as well."
Scotland has some way to go before it can match England: rowing is more popular there and they have more people to draw on. But since the schools became enthusiastic there has been a perceptible increase in the flow of good recruits and the gap is narrowing. "All the same we have a long way to go," he says. "The English crews come in only fourth or fifth in international competitions, and we're behind them. Today the top crews are German, American, Russian, in that order.
"The main thing in rowing is keenness. Obviously a crew has to be strong and have stamina to win, but keenness and determination are what win races. Brains also count. Rowing theory can be complicated, and then of course the equipment has to be planned too. A lot of people don't realise it, but in competitive rowing the boat is adapted to the crew, and in the big races is tailor-made. Supposing you have Oxford or Cambridge preparing for the Boat Race. Anything up to six months before, the coach has a good idea of the final eight men he is going to use. He knows their weight, and he has a boat built specially to suit it. It probably costs £1,000.
"An ordinary run-of-the-mill club boat costs about £600, and of course as several crews will use it it can't be made to measure; but it can be adapted. If you think it out you'll see that varying the distance between the oarsman's hands and the rigger (what you would call the rowlock on an ordinary boat) is like changing gear in a car. A strong man can work with his hands closer to the rigger and be, as it were, in top gear. A less strong man needs more of the oar inside the rigger—easier to pull but slower, like bottom gear. The height and the distance of the riggers can be adjusted to suit each member of the crew, and then of course the oars can vary too. The old idea was to have a long, narrow blade, but now they're more short and spooned and wide. You can have one made to suit your weight and style. You can pay up to £12 for it."
Rowing, says Tom Findlay, has the most unnatural action of any sport, and the novice has to learn it like an infant learning to walk. The oarsman takes violent exercise sitting down, which is unnatural for a start. He faces the wrong way. He has to hurl his body backwards in order to go forward. And added to all this is the fact that the boat is at most two feet wide and has to be balanced like a bicycle. The hardest lesson the beginner has to learn is to relax. Thereafter he has to perfect the technique to the point at which all available energy is being used to drive the boat. He has to think when the blade goes in, when to apply the effort, when the different muscles should come into play, and still keep time with the stroke. Then one day he is in a crew, rowing his first race.
"The thing that makes rowing different from any other sport is that you can't always see your opponents," says Tom Findlay. "You can't because your back may be to them. And that makes it very introspective. You're really racing against yourself, against your own will-power. You're there, not thinking about technique because that's second nature now, just concentrating on one thing, driving yourself to the winning post. You're alone. No other sport is like that. Of course if you're winning, that's different. You can see the other crew then, and get extra energy from the excitement of knowing you're in the lead. But when you're losing, you only see where you've been. That's why the losing crew is usually whacked at the finish while the winners look comparatively fresh—it's mental strain that tires them.
"There's another thing, too, that keeps the winners fresh, and that's the fact that when you're moving well it makes you feel good. The boat is so thin you can feel the river moving under you; and once you start to move fast, and the rhythm is right, and everything is going well, you get a tremendous feeling of wellbeing. This may sound far-fetched, but it is true, and it has quite a bit to do with the winning crew sitting up and smiling while the losers are flopping all over the boat."
There is also the pleasure, he says, of winning and having cups which mothers have to clean. It is significant that the word is "mothers". Wives, it seems, do not approve of rowing, and when oarsmen marry they tend to be written off or promoted to honorary vice-president or commodore. In Tom's club, which is the Clyde Amateur Rowing Club, there are few active members over 25; and in any case even bachelors are too old at 30 or at most 35. Competitive rowing is a sport strictly for the young and hearty. Tom says that in Glasgow even the river conspires against the old men. Its water is used to cool so many factories that it seldom freezes. Only the occasional spate lies between them and the 6 a.m. practice.
|
|
Tideway Heads: Sandy Walker, Convenor of Racing Control, would remind all competitors that all competing in a crew from a club affiliated to the SARA require an SARA licence. The closing dates for Women's and Men's Heads are 8th February and 17th February respectively through the OARA arrangements and entrants need to get instructions from the respective web sites. Any female competitors who have not yet applied for an SARA licence need to do so immediately and male competitors by Monday of next week at the latest. No last minute requests either by email or telephone will be accommodated.
Union Canal Works: The Union Canal works have now started. Fish-o-philes should not dispare though, they even turned up with a team of three to stun the fishes, remove them from the drained section, and place them back in the main bit of the canal! Photographs courtesy of Peter Rankin.
