June 2000
Broadening the Horizons
I swore it would not happen, but it did. I have gone to watch bumps racing. I happened to be visiting Oxford and discovered that Summer Eights was later than usual this year, so I went down for the Saturday to watch. Nothing has really changed: it was as frightening as I remembered it, except that now I did not know the folks whose lives were in danger. (The most noticeable change, of course, was the pile of rubble on the site of the former OUBC Boathouse, still there since the fire last September as University College, the owner of the property, has still made no attempt to rebuild as required by law. I nearly cried, as I gazed through the fence looking for any traces of the boats I once knew.)
What I did notice was that the level of rowing seemed to be far below what I remembered from my time in Oxford. There were a handful of first eights which were up to standard, but many were dreadful. And I saw almost no decent second eights - usually the good clubs show their depth. Depth in the women's divisions was particularly appalling.
I also had a chance to log into the Oxford rowing newsgroup and find out what was said publicly about my columns from last Summer. One poster inquired (without writing to me) what my suggestions would be to improve the standard of an Oxford collegiate boat club. I think my columns have generally answered this, but I will address one issue this month: the need to broaden horizons.
In Zurich, I have become involved in coaching part-time with Belvoir Ruderclub, an elite-level club whose head coach is a Brit named David Martin. Dave has done a stellar job at Belvoir: he has increased the level of the club, has increased the numbers, and has increased the success of its rowers. In turn, the rowers show him great respect and admiration. Dave does many things right at Belvoir, but one of his main emphases has been to broaden the horizons of the rowers - to make them think outside the box. It is very easy to think within certain constraints - as soon as the constraints are removed, there are all sorts of new possibilities. One of the things which has become quickly clear to me in talking to the women at Belvoir is that they are aware of a world beyond the box in which they were previously confined.
Swiss rowing is, surprisingly, very isolated despite Switzerland's location smack dab in the center of Europe. There is a great barrier towards entering the sport at ages when people in other countries tend to start rowing. The Ruderverband (the Swiss Rowing Association) seems to go out of its way to make the sport unpleasant for as many people as possible. Paranoid that it keep what rowers it does have well under control, it frowns upon club crews traveling outside Switzerland to compete - from what I gather, it senses that if non-internationals compete outside Switzerland, there won'tt be enough folks competing within Switzerland. This is true even when the domestic regattas are not appropriate and the foreign ones are. So, for example, sweep events - especially for women - are virtually non-existent in Switzerland at any competitive level. Belvoir has a lot of women, and if they want to do an eight they are lucky to find any competition. A scratch women's pair won a regatta recently by 54 seconds - the only women's sweep event at that regatta.
Dave works for the Ruderverband as well, so he cannot ruffle too many feathers. But when possible, he has taken the women abroad to gain experience. They have gone off to the Head of the Charles in Boston, the Head of the River in London, and the international regatta in Amsterdam this past March. They have done quite successfully, especially considering they are a club crew - with some internationals or junior internationals on board, but drawing from the club ranks. This has raised the bar - it is quite clear to me that the women understand something about international standards, and have returned to Switzerland with valuable experience which has propelled some of them to an international level and made Belvoir the premiere women's club in Switzerland (men's membership is well down at the moment, consisting of the Swiss lightweight four and two junior Bs - I gather this is cyclical and also due to the fact that two of the main rowing clubs in Zurich exclude women).
If Belvoir had stayed in Switzerland and had rowed within the generally defined lines, it is unlikely it would have the success it has. The lake (Zuerisee) is actually a rather dreadful place to train, since it is wide and the ferry boats kick up enormous wakes which make conditions bouncy even on a calm day. For a country which thrives on small boats, this is a useless venue. The paradigm had to shift to larger boats, and the level has shot up - not just compared to Switzerland, but the Belvoir crews are competitive internationally (fourth in the 1999 women's head, for example). But the bigger boats also breed more places for a bigger squad, and a bigger squad breeds more competition and excitement, and the more competition within the club breeds a higher competitive level for the club.
This brings me back to my trip to Oxford. While I was there, as I said, I had a chance to examine the messages on the Oxford rowing newsgroup (accessible only from within Oxford) which were posted about my articles last Summer. One person criticized what I wrote as not providing any answers (something like: "other than saying some kind words about Exeter College, Charles does not tell us just how college boat clubs can raise their level"). Of course, if this person were a regular reader he might have figured it out. If he's reading now, then here's one answer for him.
Oxford crews are very boxed in on the Isis. There is a great focus on the bumps, with maybe a couple of other Oxford races and sometimes a trip to an outside regatta somewhere. Oddly, these trips to outside regattas seem less prevalent in years when river conditions on the Isis make rowing at home difficult.
I am not a product of Oxford rowing. So when I arrived, I was looking in from outside. To a certain degree, I remained an outside for my four years there, mostly because I did not think much of what was going on inside. Bumps meant nothing to me, but boatspeed did mean something. I saw slow boats and thought that the same folks could go faster if they broke the mold and started training differently (not more, mind you, just differently - my crews often trained less than others as it happens). As far as I was concerned, for crews to prosper, they had to shift the focus to being competitive outside Oxford - in the process, this would certainly make them stronger within the league as well. Two events on the British rowing calendar were critical: the Eights Heads (in March) and Henley (in June/July). The Eights Heads gave a good indication of where crews were at the end of the aerobic season, and Henley gave a goal for where crews should be at the end of the season. But it was also important to do a full complement of races, including testing the rowers at the higher-level events. Why, for example, should Somerville College (then the dominant women's program in Oxford) be the only Oxford representative in the college eights event at Henley, or at the Head of the River, or have more entries than any other college at other events such as the Fours Head in November? They set their own goals, and as a result were dominant for several years. Everyone else simply contented themselves with maintaining their place in the bumps or trying to go up a notch or two (if they were already high up), or possibly dreaming about blades if they were in with a bunch of slow crews around them.
The first step to improvement is to learn to think outside the box. My father, a somewhat eccentric professor, likes to use the example of the puzzle where someone is asked to connect all of the dots in a box-shaped pattern without lifting his pen or crossing over a line once drawn. Most people cannot solve the problem. The solution, of course, is to leave the confines of the box. So my father has always taught his students of the importance of thinking differently, or making connections to concepts not within the normal scope, and of being creative with ideas and borrowing from elsewhere to find solutions.
So in rowing. Goals can be set high, but to be achieved there often needs to be a new paradigm, a new way of thinking. This need not be a critique of the league in which a program finds itself. The goal of a program within a league is to win within that league. One way to achieve that is to look beyond, to find new and innovative ways of doing things. This can come from examining what is done elsewhere. The whole league benefits from the outside input and from the improved level. Once one crew starts the move, others will follow if they hope to compete. In the end, the box expands. Then, once again, it will come time for folks to look outside the box once again.
It did not take me long to realize when I arrived in Oxford that Somerville was doing something right. Furthermore, it did not take long to realize that if other crews were unable to compete with Somerville, it was not just that Somerville was doing things right, but that others were doing things wrong. There were other reasonable crews for the level, but most were facing backwards and were stuck looking that way (that's a figurative expression, since of course they were facing backwards!).
How to improve the competitive level of a rowing program? Look around, look outside the box, and do not be complacent. New ideas can come in from anywhere, especially from outside. If what is happening now is not working, then do it differently. If what is happening now is working, then determine how it can work better. Determine if what works is working because it is inherently the right thing to do under the circumstances, or because no one else is doing it any better. Never get stuck in ways of doing things because they are "good enough." Always seek out challenges. And, if things are working well and an appropriate system is found, keep looking for new challenges - travel, see new faces, learn. No one ever knows enough.