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THE PEARCE FAMILY
With the
recent passing away of 1936 Olympic sculler, Cec Pearce, it is timely
to look at this great rowing family and the contribution the family dynasty
have made to Australian rowing.
The most famous of this family line would have to be Henry (Bobby) Pearce.
As an amateur, he won back-to-back Olympic titles in 1928 and 1932 and
this made him the only singles sculler, before the war, to have won the
same event twice. After his second victory he turned professional and
won the world title. He remained undefeated until his retirement in 1945.
According to the noted Olympic historian, Harry Gordon, Bobby Pearce was
"the finest sculler of all".
The patriarch of the Pearce family was Harry "Footy" Pearce.
Harry gained his nickname not because of any association with football
but because of the size of his feet. He continually 'nipped' people with
his toes and he soon became known as Footy because of this custom.
He once beat the great William Beach in a contest and it is said he derived
his prowess for rowing because of the occupation he had. He was in charge
of a dory boat and used to pick up cargo from ships unable to berth at
wharfs in Sydney Harbour. Harry was very competitive and used to stage
races against other boats. Of course, the quicker he got into the shore,
unload, and back out to the ship, the more money he made.
"Footy" had two sons, Harry II and Sandy. Harry II sculled for
the world title twice so he was no slouch when it came to rowing. However
his son went on to "greatness". He was Bobby Pearce.
Bobby, after his career was over, remained in Canada and had two marriages.
From his second marriage, he had a son, also named Bobby, who became a
Canadian champion in the double sculls in 1964.
On the other side of the family, Sandy became a wonderful rugby league
player for the Eastern Suburbs club in Sydney and went on to make four
tours of England in the early part of last century. One of his sons, Joe,
inherited this football ability and he too represented his country on
Kangaroo tours.
The other son, Cecil, is the gentleman who has recently passed away at
the age of 88. He rowed at the Berlin Olympics of 1936 and was national
single sculls champion of Australia from 1936 to 1939.
Cec had four sons and all of them could row just about before they could
walk. However, one went on to represent Australia. He is Gary who was
an oarsman in three Olympics: Tokyo, Mexico City and Munich. At the Mexico
Games of 1968, he rowed in the 'eights', which managed a silver medal.
Along with the squad who placed second in Sydney, these eights remain
the best-performed team in Australian Olympic history.
There is no doubt about this Pearce family. They are definitely the First
Family of Australian Rowing.
William "Bill"
Beach was born in Surrey England, on 6th December 1850.
He was the son of Alexander Beach, a blacksmith, and his wife, Mary, nee
Gibbons. Young Beach was two when the family migrated to NSW and joined
a friend called John Sculfer on his farm at Albion Park.
He grew up and lived most of his life at Dapto in the Illawarra district - learning to row on Lake Illawarra. Beach later claimed that his first earnings at age nine were from minding cows and that he later learned the trade of blacksmithing. Undoubtedly his strong physique was developed because of this trade and helped to make him such a powerful rower.
Beach won his first sculling race as a teenager against a local publican. The prize was either for a bottle of brandy or five shillings. He took part in boat races in Sydney in 1881 and won a handicap skiff race at Woolloomooloo Bay. Among the donors of his 25-pound prize was J. Deeble, a publican, who became his sponsor. In other races, he was said to have won 150 pounds, which he used to build his home at Dapto.
On 25th February 1882, Beach won 50 pounds prize money and in October - in his first outrigger race - he was second for the Punch trophy on the Parramatta River, finishing ahead of champion Edward Trickett.
The first crack Beach got at the world title was on 16th August 1884. It was against the Canadian, Edward Hanlan. Hanlan had originally come to Australia that year, to give sculling exhibitions. He claimed he was out of condition and went off on tours of all the eastern states.
Beach's credentials seemed limited. Admittedly, he had beaten fellow Australian, Edward Trickett but the Canadian reputedly had never lost a race. He believed Beach wouldn't stand a chance.
Beach was 33 when he challenged Hanlan. The race was on the Parramatta River and was rowed over a distance of 3 miles 330 yards (5.13kn). To say it was held under controversial circumstances would be a gross understatement.
The clash, for a stake of 1000 pounds, drew one of the biggest crowds sculling had ever attracted in Sydney. There were over 30,000 spectators jockeying for positions in front of the Sydney Rowing Club, near the finishing line.
When the gun went off, the two men had pulled away together but Hanlan started to apply the pressure in an effort to force Beach to use up his strength in the first kilometre. Beach ignored the Canadian's attempts and rowed on steadily at his own pace.
A few hundred more metres and Beach gradually began to overhaul the champion. Then, Hanlan stopped rowing. Apparently their oars had touched. For a moment, the men argued. Beach was the first to get going again and Hanlan, raising his hand to claim a foul, set out in pursuit.
From then, Beach had it all his own way. At each stroke he opened more water between them and, despite Hanlan's increasingly frantic sprints, Beach crossed the finishing line six lengths ahead. The wining time was 20 minutes, 28 ½ seconds.
The foul protest was dismissed on the grounds the Canadian had caused the incident by being in Beach's water.
After the race, Hanlan was bitter. He could not accept the fact that his long reign had ended. He blamed the Australian climate, the treacherous tides and an excess of hospitality for his defeat. He boasted openly that he would beat any Australian - any time - either on England's Thames or in Australia. He took his defeat so badly that he refused to attend the customary celebrations for the pay-over of stakes
The night Beach claimed the crown a large crowd had gathered in the street outside Punch's Hotel in Sydney where the stake money was to be paid over. People kept calling "We want Beach" and they would not be satisfied until the new world champion appeared on the balcony. Cheers could be heard all over the inner city.
Beach went on to row unbeaten in the next six World Sculling Championships held in Australia and England. He beat Hanlan in a total of three - in 1884, 1885 and 1887.
In 1887, seven thousand people endured pouring rain on the banks of the Nepean River at Penrith to see the two scullers compete for the World Championship title again. The stake was 500 pounds a side plus the Muir Whisky Trophy valued at 200 pounds. Once again, Beach proved he was the better man on the day.
After the race and victory the Australian announced his retirement. It was time to hang up his oars. However, the champion sculler kept up his energetic lifestyle.
At Dapto, Beach was made trustee of the local showground and accepted the presidency of the Regatta Club. He also became an alderman of the Central Illawarra Council and was patron of the Boy Scouts.
In 1873, Beach had married Sarah Dunley and they had six sons and six daughters.
He died at his home at Dapto on 28th January 1935. There is a memorial to this great rower in Cabarita Park, Concord and Beach Park, on Mullet Creek at Dapto, is named after him.
I wonder just how many of the sport loving public of this country know that the first Australian to be recognized as a world champion, in any sport, was a rower. His name was Edward Trickett and on 27th June, 1876, he defeated James H. Sadler on the Thames River in England for the world title.
Trickett was born on 12th September, 1851 at Greenwich, on the Lane Cove River, in Sydney. His father was a bootmaker and in his early days, young Ted worked as quarryman. By the year 1874 he was gaining a reputation as a rower and in the Balmain Regatta of that year, he won the outrigger race and was in the winning whaleboat crew. Later that same year he placed second to Michael Rush in the Clarence River Champion Outrigger Race. At the Anniversary Regatta of 1875 he won the light skiffs race and was now the best sculler in the colony of NSW.
In 1876 the Sydney innkeeper, James Punch, who had been a former sculler himself, took Trickett to England. And on the Putney to Mortlake course on the Thames he beat Sadler in a time of 24 mins 36 secs. Upon his return to Sydney, 25,000 people greeted him and he was wined and dined all around the state.
Trickett won several races over the next couple of years and earned enough money to buy a hotel. He became licensee of Trickett's Hotel and later became the proprietor of the International Hotel which was located on the corner of Pitt and King streets in Sydney.
In June, 1877, Trickett raced Michael Rush again, in a 200-pounds-a-side race, for the world championship and defeated him. He did this after training daily for a month.
The next year, the champion sculler was involved in an accident and lost several fingers. A rolling keg of beer crushed his hand and some of his fingers had to be amputated. This was to affect the balance of his stroke in future races and was possibly the downturn for Edward Trickett's rowing.
He did defeat one Elias Laycock in August 1879 but in 1880 he went to England to row against Ned Hanlan. He lost to the Canadian and thus lost his world title. Two years later he challenged Hanlan for the title but unfortunately, lost again to the Canadian. Ned Hanlan was to go on and become one of the greatest rowers of all time.
Trickett returned to Australia and in 1884 he moved to Rockhampton. An admirer had apparently given him a hotel.
Although associated with the hotel industry for much of his life, Trickett seemingly found religion after having been duck shooting on the Sabbath. It is reputed that he changed his ways and became a teetotaller. He also became an envoy for the Salvation Army.
Edward Trickett died on 28th November, 1916, of injuries he had received when the walls of a gold mine shaft collapsed. He is buried in the Uralla cemetery.
A memorial to him was erected by the public subscription at Uralla in 1918.
FIRST SUCCESS IN PERTH - 1962 AUSTRALIAN EIGHT
Australia scored its first eight-oared success at either a Commonwealth or an Olympic Games when it defeated the New Zealand eight by two feet at the Perth Commonwealth Games of Perth in 1962.
The Australian crew were defeated by England in the first heat. However, in the repechage rowed two days later, they swept down the Canning River course and defeated the Canadians in a time of 6min. 3.7sec.
In the final, the Aussies and New Zealanders staged a grand tussle throughout the race. At the half-way point, New Zealand led by half a length and England, who eventually finished third, dropped back to be a length astern of the leaders.
In the next quarter, Australia eliminated its leeway and at 1500 metres, was only a canvass behind. With 300 metres to go, the Australian stroke, Neville Howell, called for a sprint. His crew applied the pressure and with 50 metres to go, they reached the front. The team went on to win by a mere two feet.
The crew had revelled in the near perfect conditions and set a new Games record of 5min. 53.5sec. This time was 2.6sec. faster than the previous Games best recorded by Canada in Cardiff in 1958.
That gold
medal crew of 1962 consisted of Neville Howell, (stroke), Martin Tomanovitis,
Graeme McCall, Paul Guest, Terry Davies, Dushan Stankovich, Charles Lehman,
Ian Douglas and David Palfreyman (cox).
"I would speculate that I have rowed around the world at least 25 times".
These are the words of Canadian rower, Silken Laumann, who is somewhat of an institution in World rowing.
Laumann, born in Mississauga, Ontario, first came to prominence when she qualified for her National Rowing Team in 1983. The following year, she teamed up with her sister Daniele and won a bronze medal in the double scull event at the Los Angeles Olympics.
For the next seven years, she had a number of highs and lows in her chosen sport having won the Pan American Games single scull event in 1987 but failing to make the Olympic final at Seoul in 1988. However, in 1991 she won the world championship and as the Barcelona Games approached, Silken was considered the overwhelming favourite.
However, just 73 days before she was scheduled to race at the Olympics, Laumann was the victim of a horrific accident. While warming up for a heat at the Regatta in Essen, Germany, her shell was rammed by a pairs shell. Her leg was so severely damaged that the German doctors who worked on her doubted she would ever row again.
What the doctors didn't count on was the grit and determination that had driven the Canadian towards her goal for so long. It had not been diminished and less than four weeks after her accident, she was back in her rowing shell and focused on the job ahead.
Her courageous comeback caught the imagination of the world and became the subject of a vignette by famed Olympic filmmaker, Bud Greenspan.
At Barcelona, she was walking with the aid of a cane but she performed miracles on the water. She finished second in her qualifying heat and then won her semi-final. In the final, Laumann held on to third place for most of the race but was passed by Anne Marden of the USA with 500 metres to go.
But Silken seemed to find an inner strength and pulled ahead of the American 100 metres from the finish to take out the bronze medal.
Following the Spanish Games, Laumann took a year off but returned to international rowing in 1994. Now married, she continued to remain focused upon the pursuit of excellence and dedicated to her sport. She made the Canadian team for Atlanta, in 1996, and there finished with a second placing to complete her Olympic career.
Silken Laumann
continues her involvement with rowing today as she tours Canada, giving
inspirational talks and encouraging young rowers to take up the sport
she so loves.
It was the custom of the US Olympic Committee, at early Games, to select a university team to represent their country in the prestigious 'eights' event. In 1924, that team was from Yale University.
We have already read about one Bill Havens from that crew who refused to go to Paris because his wife was pregnant. (He was rewarded twenty-eight years on when his son, Frank, won the gold medal in the 10,000 metres Canadian canoeing singles at Helsinki).
Anyway, there was another member of that crew who did compete in 1924 and win. He was a gawky 6-foot 4-inch student who was doing a pre-med course and his name was Ben Spock.
Spock went on to become a paediatrician and in 1945 he wrote a book called "The Common Sense Book of Baby Child Care". This book is considered the bible in matters of child raising and has sold over 45 million copies in more than 30 languages.
Not only was Dr. Spock a "baby expert" but he also happened to be the possessor of an Olympic gold medal.
He died at
age 94 on March 15, 1998.
People who travel on the Parramatta River in Sydney, often wonder at a monument in the river, just off the suburb of Henley. It is a broken column, on a rock mounting, and it commemorates the achievements and untimely death of one of Australia's greatest rowers, Henry Ernest Searle.
Searle was born in 1866 on the Clarence River in northern New South Wales. He was a well-known local rower and had the nickname of the 'Clarence River Comet'. He came to Sydney when he was 22 and competed in contests on the Parramatta River where rowing, in those days, brought the biggest crowds of any sporting events. The course for all these contests started near the present Ryde Road Bridge and finished at a point known as the Three Brothers, a grouping of three rocks that are visible at low tide. The course was approximately 4.8 kilometres and all these races were for prize money.
In September 1888, Searle beat the then reigning World Champion, fellow Australian, Peter Kemp. The purse for that particular race was 500 pounds.
The following year, Searle accepted a challenge from the American champion, W.J. O'Conner, this time for a purse of 1000 pounds. The race was rowed over the Putney to Mortlake course on the River Thames, a distance of 7.24 kilometres. The Australian won the race and decided to leave England and travel back home. On the return journey, he became ill with what was described as 'enteric fever'.
When his ship berthed in Melbourne, Searle was rushed to hospital but died of peritonitis on 10 December 1889. He was 23 years of age.
More than 100,000 people lined the streets of Sydney for his funeral cortege from the Sydney Railway Station to a Clarence River steamer. He was buried on Esk Island in the Clarence River.
Following his death, a public subscription was held and a memorial planned to commemorate this great rower. This monument now stands at the finishing point on the famous Parramatta River rowing course.
The woman considered to be the most powerful female in world sport today is an American with the exotic sounding name of Anita DeFrantz.
And she comes from the sport of rowing!
DeFrantz is not only a member of the International Olympic Committee, she is a Vice-President of this most august body and many tip her to be a future leader.
But where did she come from and what is her background? Is she one of the old 'crusties' who make up the majority of the membership of the IOC, or has she come from the ranks of competing sportsmen and women?
Anita DeFrantz grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana, and her sporting career began as a swimmer. She was the only girl on a local public park swim team and when the volunteer coach left, so ended her involvement with aquatics.
She attended Shortridge High School and of some interest is the fact she was a member of that school's marching band. (Remember the Marching Bands fiasco in the lead-up to the Sydney Games).
As a young African-American growing up in the 1960's, her options for playing sport were limited. But when she went to Connecticut College, and being almost six-feet tall, she tried out for basketball. She made the team even though she didn't know how to play the game.
In her second year at Connecticut, DeFrantz found the sport of rowing quite by accident. She was walking across the campus one day and came across a man standing by a rowing shell. She asked what it was and he introduced her to the sport she fell in love with.
She was later to call rowing, "the noblest of sports, everyone being part of the effort."
Following her graduation from college, DeFrantz went off to the University of Pennsylvania to attend law school. She had set herself the goal of getting a law degree. Another goal was to make the Olympic rowing team and this she did in 1976.
At the Montreal Games Anita DeFrantz was a member of the USA 'eights' which finished third behind East Germany and the Soviet Union. This gave her a bronze medal but she had her sights on a gold medal and she believed she could achieve this at the following Games.
Such was not to be the case. The United States did not attend the Moscow Games. They boycotted them over the invasion of Afghanistan and DeFrantz was denied the chance of rowing for gold.
To this day, Anita DeFrantz is very bitter about that situation. She believes politics has no place in sport and has been a strong anti-boycott advocate within the Olympic community.
Following the disappointment of 1980, DeFrantz turned her hand to administration and in 1986 she became the first Afro-American woman to serve as a member of the International Olympic Committee. In 1993 she was voted to the Executive Board. Only recently has she been made a Vice-president.
DeFrantz is President of the Amateur Athletic foundation in the United States. This body is dedicated to spreading the ideals of Olympism, to the young people of America, by way of grants and sports programs.
Anita DeFrantz's
philosophy on the Olympics can be best summed up by words she uttered
shortly after embarking on her career in sports administration: "Sport
is a powerful tool that our society needs to understand better ……………
and utilize better."
Most Australians have heard of the famous Hollywood actress, Grace Kelly. This beautiful female lead of so many wonderful American movies endeared herself to the film going public and became a star in the 1950's. She later went on to meet, and marry, Prince Rainier of Monaco and for the remainder of her life lived in his small Mediterranean principality.
However, what most Australians probably don't know is that Princess Grace of Monaco had a very famous father who was an Olympic rowing champion.
John Kelly was a Philadelphia bricklayer who won 126 straight rowing races. He was intent on taking out the most prestigious of all rowing events, the Diamond Sculls at Henley, England. In 1920, Kelly prepared himself for this big event but he was barred from competing because his rowing club had been accused of participating in professional races.
A few weeks later, at the Antwerp Olympics, Kelly took on the Diamond Sculls winner, Jack Beresford in the final of the single sculls event and beat him. However, so draining was this competition on both men that they could not even shake hands at the end of the race. They were too exhausted!
Nevertheless, Kelly managed to recover sufficiently to win a second gold medal in the double sculls event a mere 30 minutes later.
Four years later, John Kelly returned to the Olympic arena and at the 1924 Games in Paris, he successfully defended his double sculls title.
Apart from his beautiful daughter, Kelly had a son, John Jnr.
John Jnr. followed in his father's footsteps and competed in the Olympic Games himself. He brought great joy to his father when in 1947 he won the Diamond Sculls -- something his father had been denied.
Shortly before competing in the Melbourne Olympics, Kelly junior promised to bring back a medal as a wedding gift for his sister who was about to marry Prince Rainier. He never said which colour the medal would be and true to his word, he delivered to Grace an Olympic bronze medal which had tremendous sentimental value.
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