TYPE OF ROWING MAN In the days of the fixed seat, when the power of the stroke came from the shoulders and the arms, the oarsman was apt to be a great, broad chested fellow, but with the slide the stroke had so many changes and called for so much more activity and general development that the long, lithe man came into favor, and the best crews since have been made up from that type.
I have no knowledge of any crew being really fast, the members of which were either very heavy or very light ; an average below 15o or over 175 is bad. The light men have not the strength to pull, and the very heavy men cannot put on a force in proportion to their weight.
The stroke-oars have usually been small men, with the activity to raise the stroke and to keep it up when necessary, and few crews with tall men at No. 8 have been very fast. Heavier men can be permitted in the waist of the boat, but even there few men weighing over 18o will be found efficient; the strength of a man above that weight must be enormous to make him of use. Forward of the middle the weights should gradually lessen, so that the head of the shell may ride well out of the water. The weights of the famous Ward Brothers'
four, ranging from stern to bow, were 154-, 1531, 163, 154. Wilbur Bacon's crew of 1864 had an average of 155, but at that time the reducing sys tem was well in force, and that crew to-day would have rowed at ten pounds heavier. The members of a four may be lighter than those of an eight for four miles, and there are few good eights that go below i6o pounds, while more are above that average. The heaviest crew of which I have record is that of Bowdoin in 1891 ; it averaged 181, and was not fast. In the Yale-Harvard races the very heavy crews have always been beaten, and the same story is true at Poughkeepsie.
With the play of the legs in the stroke the oars man is apt to be larger below the waist than above in distinction to the oarsman of the previous age, and the wiry man is generally preferred to the stouter build.