None of us who were at Henley last year will forget the amazing stories Zbich ran round the clubs, bouse-hosts, and enclosures, of the Eelgisus' ides of training. With amused, if not pitying incredulity, it was told how they ate drank what they liked; how they smoked; how they bad actually beau soon licking up ice-cream at an Italian hokey-pokey barrow the day before the race, And when they appeared in their best, it was clear that their ideas of rowing were as original as those of training.
If one watches " very perfect English eight—ssy for example the Oxford crew of 1897 or the Cambridge crew of 1900—one notices that the swing of the bodies exactly coincides at the begining and and of the stroke with the petition of the slides: the, oarsmen's body swings s much as if he were on a fixed seat—which is the reason why all men at Oxford and Cambridge servo their apprenticeship on fixed seats in order to learn to swing—but the shoulders, travelling through restor are move faster than the slide in order that, in the accepted phrase, shoulders and slide should "finish together." Further one notices that at the very instant that the owing forward finished, the oarsmen spring back from the stretcher as if by the action of clockwork, thus "catching the beginning" bard. Finally one perceives that all the work of pulling is done by body and logs, the arms morely acting, in theory, as ropes.
Now first one observed that the Belgians did not owing at all! Their bodies remained perpendicular, they kicked—th slide—which, the writer remembers rightly, sloped downwards from bow to stern, to help the men in getting quickly from one stroke to anothor—backwards and forwards with rapid thrusts of th legs, and pulled the oar hard into th chest with the arms. Further the was no beginning" to the stroke recording to English ideas Whoa the men bad "come forward" (i clit over the stretcher with arms extended and oars ready to enter the water) they seemed to pause for an appreciable length of time. Then denly the eight oars dropped into or and were whipped through speed. The oar blades were Belgian peculiarity, more scoop the 5} r 5} in, English blades, The mountain of water which Belgian blade scooped up. as seen on the glasry unruffled surface of the Thames that bot still day in July last year when the final for the Grand was raced, was a thing that once seen, one will never forget.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.