Ted Nash's 1964 Dispatch from the Tokyo Olympics
July 15, 2008 | Men's Rowing
Part II The Olympics
Blades, Rigging, Boats & Measurements
Comment on "The Greatest Games"
by Ted A. Nash
Lake Washington Rowing Club and
University of Pennsylvania Assistant Coach
The 18th World Olympiad, hailed as the greatest in history, ended Saturday, Oct. 24th, 1964, in a proud hour for Japan and an inspirational moment for all men. The Olympic flame, burning for 15 days in its giant cauldron above the National Stadium, was [sn]uffed out as the flags of 94 participating nations were lowered. 7,000 athletes and officials, and 90,000 standing-room-only spectators watched, sang "Auld Lang Syne," and marched out arm in arm in complete disarray from the beautiful venue where the greatest amateur athletes in the world had tasted victory and defeat, glory and disappointment, and as Red Smith might have added, "there wasn't a dry eye in the house"...
The news press, television, and magazines, have reported as never before detailed results, color, and spectacle, so all that is left is the unusual and the attitudes. From the very beginning in Los Angelos where the U.S. team assembled at the Biltmore Hotel we had both. In Rome in 1960 the USA had a fine, strong but relaxed team, who were mentally unprepared for the level of competition they would face. This 1964 group were running scared, were spartan-like in their pre-game training and habits and even the "little-kiddie-swimmers" were all business. The discipline was excellent throughout.
The reception was spectacular, the cleanliness and orderly fashion amazed us, the thoughtfulness of our hosts - the Japanese - was a constant surprise - They provided 750 new bicycles within the Olympic Village grounds on a "no-owner" basis. We simply found a vacant bike, rode it anywhere, left it there, and it was fair-game for anyone else - the seats never had a chance to cool off. Bus schedules, tours, eating and training facilities, were excellent with no measure spared to make the athletes feel at home.
Opening Ceremony was even more moving than that in Rome. Cannons boomed, doves whirred, electronic gongs and an emperor proclaimed the Games open, jets wove interlocking vapor trails in Olympic rings, and Toshinori Sakai carried his Olympic torch and thrust it into the world's largest charcoal broiler - all this at one time. East and West Germans marched under a single banner, Ghanians paraded in togas with one shoulder bare - seemingly right off a movie set. Russian women, unexpectedly svelte in beige suits, toured the track waving at the crowd with hankies - red, of course. Oddly, no single national contingent won the major ovation - not even Japan's own team - the gallery obviously was too polite to play favorites.
The Toda Rowing Course is man's largest swimming pool, a rectangle 1 ½ miles long by 6 ½ lanes wide iwht flowered paths and parks on both sides. No launches are allowed except for official judges. Ceramic tiled 100 meter makrers and foam blocks every 30 meters, a la Albano system, defined the narrow lanes. Major investment and superb design made it 100% more rowable than when we raced there on tour in 1961. Now there are excellent boathouses and launching docks, I.B.M. and press-television buildings, as well as rest and mess-halls for the oarsmen.
Coxswains were weighed before and after each race, all crews were photographed prior to and following their heat and finals for identification and authenticity, and even the shells were secretly marked in ultra-violet so that there could be no "improprieties" -
Lanes and drawings were fair and about equally loaded in all races until the final day when an error in timing allowed the races to proceed with a tremendous quartering-head wind favoring the lee-lanes #6,5,4 and hinderings lanes 3,2,&1 with choppy water. The prime example was the first race - the four-oared with coxswain - where the six crews finished 6,5,4,3,2 & 1, in that order up to 28 seconds spread with the highly favored and superb Russian European championship crew in lane #2 and therefore the 5th roughest finishing 5th, while a good German crew won on calm lane 6. By the time the next event had been run off a non-seeded Canadian pair-without coxswain, also in lane 6, had won over European champions, Netherlands, in a rougher lane. The then postponed races resumed after a more even head win appeared one hour later. Eventually, by the dark of night, the seven events were completed with an ever increasing fairness of wind. By the time the last event - the eight - went over the line it appeared about equal for all. But for argument's sake, let's look at the lane-to-medal ratio:
Lanes 4, 5, & 6 earned 15 medals, all colors
Lanes 1, 2, & 3 earned 6 medals, all colors
On the whole, there appears to be no great crew country, or individual out of these Games in rowing. The change in conditions bore out weaknesses in many of the favorite crews and their race plans. There seems to be room at the top for any hard working and sound crew to make it, be it club or college trained. No crew was far and away superior to the 2nd or 3rd place crew.
Along these lines we should warn ourselves that although the U.S. all-over showing of two golds, one silver, and one bronze, was the best by a notch or two over that of Germany or Russia, we are not to be lulled into thinking we are now "returned supreme." Only the luck of the draw kept any other country from that piece of silver or gold to tip the scales. Be we are again on an even sculling and sweep level with the world and can hold heads high.
The Soviet Union's poorly timed change of heads of state and the Chinese government['s] politically [&] excellently timed atomic experiment caused no end of questioning, at the village at night after turnouts but on the race-course it was all rowing, or what ever the sport, and precious little else was discussed. Everyone came to play the game and nothing short of another all-out war could halt or impede these Japanese Games.
Generally I would say the Netherlands, in rowing, had made the most rapid progress internationally along the lines of training method, race planning, and team effort. In the various European regattas the Dutch entered two of each of the seven events regularly - often winning medals in every event and gaining much experience. This plan paid dividends in Tokyo where they gained one silver, two bronze and a fourth place and but for the previously mentioned unevenness of the winds their pair with-out might well have had their piece of gold.
If appears as if interval training these past 4 years since the Rome Olympiad, has produced splendid sprint results as seen in the pre-race Tokyo conditions. Bursting power for short periods was evidenced for every class - e.g. German 8; 1:21.9 for 500 mr, -German 4/with; 1:28 and 1:28.5 for two 500 mr -, German 4/without cox; and U.S.A. 4/without in 1:27.5 for 500 mr., -- U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. doubles 1:29 for 500 mr, - Roumanian 4/without cox did 42.5 seconds for 250 meters.-and Italian 4/without in 3:03.5 for 1000 mr.
These fast interval times and constant bursts of high stroking as Groen and Ivanov often do, make it clear that there is a method for flat and/or down-wind racing, but yet another for "into" or "up-wind" rows. The finals made that obvious as the previous winners were beaten time after time and the powerful longer strokes paid off.
The main point we can glean from measurements is that in the majority of cases the medal winners carried a heavy work load. The into-the-wind conditions frustrated many of the favorites who where high strokers, while the longer and lower crews pulled away the last 500. Only in the earlier calm lanes (#6, 5, & 4) races does this trend break down at all. Yet when the heats and repechages were held in equally calm and down-wind attidtudes the high-stroking, light-loaded crews won easily. For silver and bronze spots this trend also held true.
Vesper's 8 "out-Germaned" the Germans in that they were able to gain from the interval work power and endurance and yet were flexible enough to lengthen the lower stroke into the head-winds and reach-out. All the way down the course coxswain Zimonyi could he heard yelling for length, and lengthen they did for a splendid five-second lead and victory.
It is not beyond undergraduate abilities to teach this flexibility and yet keep our training method in intervals. However, it is not something we can do by constantly seeking the smooth water and racing down-wind as the Europeans often do - by nature of their courses and terrain. Experience in all-weather training, then, will eliminate, in part, the sad fate of the Russian 4/with coxswain, our own strong single sculler, Spero, as well as the German 4-oared without cox. Perhaps these three cases were the greatest set-backs of rowing Games.
It is interesting to note the unusual rigging and oar variables we saw in Rome, returned to "normal," or near normal, in Tokyo. Generally the spreads and shank lengths were about the same - A few were outsized - but these seemed to pay the price in head-winds while the more standard groups had the reverse fortune.
George Pocock has said the Games are a wonderful experience for a young person and that they are a "splendid educational reward for years of dedication, sacrifice, and sweat" - The medal winners generally are content, the others re-dedicated and wiser.
Robert Brightwell, of the British track squad, recently spoke of his feelings at the games, "...one thing that moved me ... was the closing ceremony ... I felt that everyone in that stadium was human ... that the blacks, yellows, oranges, and the whites were one ... all of us felt in that split second what a load of bloody nonsense it was to go around chopping each other up and fighting. ...."
