GO TO HARVARD. There, at the country’s premier rowing school, search the aisles of the Coop for books on crew.

 

There are none, even in this Olympic year. Across the street or downtown, in a city known for bookstores, the selection is scarcely better. Even in Boston, where college is king and crew its most noble sport, rowing remains an insular and remarkably quiet pursuit – a curious obsession, some think, for what’s been called a sport for Type A personalities.

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Turn southwest to Philadelphia and Schuylkill River. There, in the warmth of a late spring afternoon, some measure can be put on rowing’s appeal. In the three miles from the weir at Boathouse Row to the Twin Stones railroad bridges, nearly a thousand oarsmen can be found rowing as many as 150 shells. Thirty coaching launches kick up wake. More than two dozen individual clubs and schools search for flat, clear water. Sometimes, says Olympic contender Dave Anderson, it is impossible to row a decent training piece.

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There is the river itself, bounded by Fairmount Park from the weir on up, and closed for five miles to all but rowers. There are top competitors, drawn nationwide by Philadelphia’s reputation for coaching, for facilities and for the close personal networks that grow up among rowers. Behind it all, however, is Boathouse Row, the dozen clubhouses lining the Schuylkill just above the spillway, commanding the last peaceful stretch of water before the river gives in to the city.

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For 125 years the clubs have provided Philadelphia and American rowing with a geographical and spiritual focal point. Sometimes housed in the same ornate building, clubs such as Malta, Penn AC and Vesper, the most famous of all, produce world champions with remarkable regularity. From Philadelphia this year, many think, will come the first Olympic gold for an American men’s eight since 1964 – won that year, fittingly, by a Vesper crew.

 

Ironically, the buildings were never created to house racing shells. Nor were they all designed as the imposing structures they’ve become – a fact which has presented a few of the clubs with some large and continuous problems. Philadelphia rowing in the mid-19th century was a more leisurely pastime: clinker-built, six-oared barges took families on picnics and day trips along the Schuylkill and Delaware. To house the 30-foot craft, wooden sheds were built at the river’s edge above the weir; these served as the forerunners to the current clubhouses.

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Many of the 10 clubs began officially before the Civil War, fostered in part by the saloon on the hill above Boathouse Row, now preserved as the Lemon Hill Mansion. Bachelor’s Barge Club, the oldest on the Row, was founded in 1854.

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By the 1850s, rowers had become national heroes. The American public found in rowing an ideal outlet for its increasing leisure time and money. Professional watermen earned anywhere from $50 to $3,000 per race in contests that sometimes drew as many as 20,000 spectators. As the professional side of the sport grew, so did the amateur clubs and their boathouses. Water and gas were installed in the clubs. Extensions were added to accommodate the new eight-man shells when they were introduced in 1885. As a precaution against fire, the city ordered that any further building be done in stone – one cause of the settlement problems that many clubs now face.

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By the 1870s, however, corruption had begun to taint the sport. With such large purses – one oarsman reputedly earned almost $12,000 in 1879 – and heavy wagers at stake, rowers began throwing races and sabotaging competitors’ boats. Tricks ranged from drilling holes in the hull and camouflaging them with temporary fillings of grease, to sawing the shell in half. When the scandals became known, the professional side of the sport fell into disgrace, virtually disappearing by 1900.

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In Albany and Poughkeepsie, once Philadelphia’s rivals as professional rowing centers, the sport has yet to recover. On Boathouse Row, however, the proximity of the clubs and the Schuylkill’s ideal conditions, together with a lot of handy amateur competition, saved it from the same fate. The National Association of Amateur Oarsmen also helped preserve rowing’s status in Philadelphia. As the forerunner to the United States Rowing Association, it was founded there in 1872, to define the term ‘amateur’ and help distinguish its members from the dishonored professionals.

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Not all clubs trace their roots back to those times, but those that do have proved highly resilient. Many have grown symbiotically with the schools and colleges they now host. While the focus in Philadelphia this year remains the elite rowers competing from Vesper and Penn AC and UPenn for an Olympic berth, the city’s schools and colleges comprise the bulk of the estimated 4,000 oarsmen who regularly use the river. Two of the local high schools train more than 200 rowers apiece each year on the Schuylkill.

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The Row itself starts at the city end with Plaisted Hall – not a boathouse as such, but a recreation facility for the clubs and considered one of their own. Then comes Fairmount Boat Club, predominantly for Masters-class rowers. The former United States Rowing Association headquarters is next, currently home for Drexel University crew; then comes Crescent Boat Club, a club oriented toward junior and senior programs.

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Bachelor’s Barge Club follows, then University Barge Club, two wealthier clubs both shared by schools. Malta Boat Club is next, one of the richest on the Row and geared toward lightweight sculling. Vesper Boat Club, the most famous, shares the building with Malta. Next door is the University of Pennsylvania Boat Club, the busiest on the river, and then Penn Athletic Club, known, like Vesper, for its competitive crews and today for its colorful coach, Ted Nash. Undine Barge Club, known for sculling, follows, and then the Philadelphia Girls’ Rowing Club, aged 50 this year. At the end sits the Sedgeley Club, known for its lighthouse and for its social functions, but not for rowing.

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If Boathouse Row is a family, as elite oarsman Mike Teti has described it, then Vesper is its Grande Dame. “Mother Vesper,” they sometimes call it. It has spawned the majority of world champion and Olympic sweep oarsmen of the last several decades. Before it imposed a limit, several hundred amateur oarsmen showed up at the club’s door each summer for the chance to row there. “Vesper has that mystique,” explains Teti, a club member and bowman of the 1987 World Champion eight. Vesper’s 1964 Olympic gold crew, captained by Dietrich Rose, former and current Vesper head coach, was the first non-collegiate eight to represent the USA in 60 years. The 1904 gold-medal eight -- and the 1900 eight – also came from Vesper.

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It was also the last men’s club eight chosen for an Olympic team before the camp selection process for the larger boats was instituted. Regardless, many feel that when U.S. Rowing’s national technical director, Kris Korzeniowski, completes his selection of the Olympic eight and coxed four on August 1st, at least a few of the seats will belong to Vesper men. But there are problems.

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“It’s a revolving door for international teams,” complains one world-class rower, and that, adds Teti, has been both positive and negative. “People have come, they’ve used it and abused it, and left.”

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And while welcoming all, it has channeled most of its resources into equipment for the sole purpose of speed on the water. Although its programs are ranked among the fastest in the country, some of the cost can be seen today throughout the clubhouse: holes in the tin ceilings, grillwork gone from the handsome wooden lockers, the floors and walls sloping at crazy angles as the building settles into the soft riverbank.

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Yet it gains major strength from its democracy. Anyone can row at Vesper. The club established the first women’s program on the river, and Vesper today is ‘unchallengeable’ in the nation in lightweights, claims John B. (J.B.) Kelly III, its new president. Many internally competitive clubs, such as Penn AC, focus on men’s heavyweight programs to the exclusion of all others. As with so much of Philadelphia rowing, most of the credit can be traced to the Kelly family. “It’s more a common man’s sport here in Philadelphia,” explains J.B., putting paid, as his famous grandfather and father did, to its image of money and prestige.

            

One of Kelly’s primary goals as president is to improve Vesper’s financial standing, particularly for sorely needed repairs. Most of all, however, as an accomplished oarsman and former captain of Harvard’s crew team, he wants to move quickly: “All of that focuses on the one big goal,” he explains, “which is to continue to be the fastest club in our three programs.”

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Always it comes back to speed, and coordination, that moment of ‘swing’ when a shell rises up and begins to fly. For this, the country’s top oarsmen postpone careers, sometimes for years, descending on Philadelphia to pursue a goal that few outside the small world of elite rowing know or care about. Resistant to the television camera, it is a sport that rewards its champions with little fame and even less money.

 

Still they come, and never more than in an Olympic year. “I think that’s what’s motivating most of them,” says Dietrich Rose, “the chance to go to the World Championships and the Olympics. If it were just at the national level, you wouldn’t see the kind of participation you’re seeing.” 

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The discussion often returns to the network of support that develops on the Row. The elite oarsmen weight-train together, they row together, they drink together and occasionally room together, sometimes even when they’re competing for the same seats on the national team. They list other reasons for Philadelphia’s appeal, as well, chief among them the quality of the coaching. Many top heavyweight sweep oarsmen join Penn AC to row under the indefatigable Ted Nash, whose support for his athletes is legendary. Many others choose Vesper and Dietrich Rose.

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Primarily, however, they cite Kris Korzeniowski as the key to both Philadelphia’s and the United States’ success. Now in his fifth year as U.S. Rowing’s technical director, he has guided American rowing to a common style, developing a deep and uniform national team. Every national team boat he has coached, but one, has medaled.

 

How much will you pay for a chance at the gold, runs the silent question, and why? For every Olympic seat in the eight and coxed four, admit the contenders, Philadelphia is training at least three outstanding, qualified oarsmen. No lucrative endorsement contracts await those who win. The lifestyle during training is often best described as ‘modest.’

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Dave Anderson is but one example. A Wellesley, Massachusetts native and graduate of Boston’s exclusive Belmont Hill prep school and UPenn, he is contending this year for a seat in the Olympic double scull. Rowing, he admits, has been the focus of his life for the last six years. While he trains in Philadelphia, he uses his parents’ old car, mileage 120,000-plus. He shares accommodation with another elite rower; monthly rent, $170. It’s quite reasonable, he agrees, yet as a substitute elementary school teacher, a job needed for the time and flexibility to train, it’s necessary. His estimate of his current annual income: $5,000 to $6,000. Regardless, he owns $6,000 worth of racing shells. “Any money you have, you spend.” As for the sport’s snob appeal and that added incentive, he has little time. “If you’re doing it to be preppy,” he says dismissively, “it’s the wrong reason. You can just go to Brooks Brothers.”

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Mike Teti keeps training and rowing, aware that despite his world championship, Coach Korzeniowski guarantees nothing. Teti says he is not sure about his plans after the Olympics. He credits his family’s support – the endless laundry service, how his brother John manages much of his work for him – for giving him the freedom to train. But of his 10-year career as an insurance agent he says only, “I have a job, but I don’t think about it a lot.”

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“Rowing full-time just gets too expensive,” says Dave Anderson. “not in terms of boats, but in terms of lost opportunities.” Often described as Type A’s, and sometimes less kindly as obsessive-compulsive, the Olympic contenders are products of many of the nation’s top schools. A universally thoughtful and articulate group, their prospects for lucrative careers are bright.

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In this, the most amateur of sports, the postponement can get expensive. Anderson, for one, has made his choice. Regardless of an Olympic seat, he is enrolling in law school in September.

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Yet rowing continues to hold them. It is the ultimate team sport, they say. So much training is required for a six-minute race that nothing matches a victory. They say that rowing one good piece at the end of a workout offers sustenance for whatever happens later on.

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“I remember the first time I was in a single,” explains Kay Worthington, a Canadian Olympic rower who trains in Philadelphia and hopes to row the women’s single for Canada in Seoul. “The water was like glass and I was the only one out there. It was the first time that I actually got my blades off the water and I was able to get my weight behind the oars. I was really moving. I thought, ‘I have this wingspan. This must be the closest thing to flying.’”

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Like Dave Anderson, other elite rowers talk about retiring after one last try, but they have their doubts.

 

“You intend to retire,” says Kay, “and you find you can’t live without it.”

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“It’s hard to give up on something you’re good at,” adds John Strotbeck, a world-class stroke who also trains on the Schuylkill.

           

Dietrich Rose offers a slightly different perspective.

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“They’re just hooked,” he says. “It’s like an addiction.”