Bobby Pearce: The Sculler Who Stopped For Ducks

Australia has a remarkable heritage in the sport of rowing, dating back to 1876 when Parramatta quarryman Edward Trickett won the single sculls world championship on the Thames River, Great Britain. The first Australian to achieve this distinction in any sport, Trickett was followed by many others in the years to come. In 1888 Henry Searle repeated Trickett's achievement, whilst another compatriot of Trickett who was an early Australian world sculling champion was William Beach. In the early years of the next century one of the prodigies of Australia rowing was Frederick Septimus Kelly, who as part of the Leander Club's rowing eight helped with a gold medal for the host nation at the 1908 London Olympics. However it took until 1928 and the Amsterdam Summer Olympic Games for an Australian rower to win a gold medal; that Olympian was Bobby Pearce, and his regatta in the Netherlands was marked by one of the most unusual events in Olympic history.

Henry Robert Pearce was born in London in 1905, but was known for most of his life as Bobby Pearce. His father Harry was a much accomplished rower who had twice challenged for the world championship. His grandfather Harry Pearce Senior had sculled against Ed Trickett and had beaten William Beach before Beach went on to win the world championship in 1885. With so much sculling heritage in his family, it was no surprise that at the age of six Bobby first entered a regatta and won an under-16 handicap race. Pearce then went on to win his first open event at the age of 14, and in 1926 he took the Australian single sculls championship title. Growing up in the Sydney harbourside suburb of Double Bay, his immediate rowing future before the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics came under a shadow due to accusations of professionalism. Convincing the New South Wales Amateur Rowing Association that this was a case of mistaken identity (arguing it was one of his brothers who had received payment for race rowing, an insurmountable bar to Olympic competition which was firmly amateur in 1928), Bobby Pearce was confirmed by the then Australian Olympic Federation as Australia's single sculls entrant.

The Amsterdam 1928 rowing regatta was held on the Sloten Canal, and in the single sculls (also known as the skiff) there were fifteen countries represented with fifteen entrants. The format of the competition was an initial round of seven match races, followed by a reclassification/repercharge round, a second round of six matches races and two reclassifications, a third round of four match races, a semi-final and then the gold medal final scull. Bobby Pearce had carried the Australian flag at the front of the Australian team in the Antwerp opening ceremony and this honour was a tribute to his potential results in the upcoming Olympic regatta. The leading rivals for Pearce were the Briton Theodore Collet, the American Kenneth Myers and the local sculler, Dutchman Lambertus Collet.

In the opening round Pearce demonstrated his superiority over his German rival Walter Flinsch, a five-time national champion, reaching the finish of their scull 26 seconds in front of the German. In the Sydney Morning Herald it was reported that Bobby Pearce had actually pulled up and waited for Flinsch to finish. Amongst the other potential medallists Myers had defeated De Kok from South Africa, Collet beat Candeveau of Switzerland and Gunther had narrowly lost to the Canadian Wright. Importantly Pearce had set the quickest time for the distance, winning in 7 minutes 55.75 seconds.

The next round of sculling matches were even more promising for Pearce. Rowing against the Dane oarsman Schwartz Bobby Pearce won with eight lengths to spare, taking almost a full half minute off his previous race time. Gunther had won through his reclasification round and won his race, whilst Myers defeated Collet. It was obvious by now that Bobby Pearce was in gold medal winning form. It was going to take a lot to stop Pearce in his quarter-final race against the French rower Victor Saurin. No one would have expected what did stop the Australian on his way to gold.

As recorded by Harry Gordon in his book "Australia and The Olympic Games", the following story was reported by a Dutch newspaper and had many and varied retellings. However Pearce himself gave only one recorded version of the incident that occurred in his scull against Savrin, in an interview given to sports historian Henry Roxborough in 1976, just after Pearce's death;

"I had beaten a German and a Dane in earlier heats and I was racing a Frenchman when I heard wild roars from the crowd along the bank of the canal. I could see some spectators vigorously pointing to something behind me, in my path. I peeked over one shoulder and saw something I didn't like, for a family of ducks in single file was swimming slowly from shore to shore. It's funny now, but it wasn't at the time for I had to lean on my oars and wait for a clear course, and all the while my opponenet was pulling away to a five length lead."

With an effort that would have been considered impossible from any of his competitors, and even today is hard to believe Pearce chased Savrin after stopping for the duck and its ducklings, caught up with the Frenchmen and then by the time the race was over Pearce had finished almost 30 seconds in front of his challenger. In fact Bobby Pearce's time even with the stop included was the fastest of the remaining eight scullers in that round. Not even swimming ducks could halt Bobby Pearce.

In the semi-final Pearce came up against the Briton Collet, and won through to the gold medal race by four lengths. The American Myers was unbeaten like Pearce, but his fastest time for the course was still a good 12 or so second behind the Australian's best. The final race, held on smooth water in the Sloten Canal on 15th October 1928 ended as it was expected. Pearce took the gold (in a time of 7 minutes 11 seconds, a record that would remain for the Olympic single sculls until Munich 1972) and was thus the greatest single oarsman at the 1928 Olympics. He was the first Australian rower to win a gold medal at the Olympics, then four years later he was the first Australian to successfully defend an Olympic title when he took gold at the 1932 Los Angeles regatta. Arguably the greatest pre-World War Two Australian Olympian, Bobby Pearce will always be remembered as the man who stopped rowing for ducks at the Olympic Games.

Sources:

• "The Complete Book of the Olympics: 2008 Edition" by David Wallechinsky, Aurum Press, 2008
• "The Official Report of the 1928 Amsterdam Summer Olympics" (available online at http://www.la84foundation.org/6oic/OfficialReports/1928/1928.pdf)
• "Australia And The Olympic Games" by Harry Gordon, UQP 1994
• "100 Greatest Olympians from 1896" by Jim Tracy, Savvas Publishing, 1983
• Wikipedia Article - Bobby Pearce Biography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Pearce
• Australian Dictionary of Biography Online - Harry Pearce Jnr: http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A050468b.htm
• Australian Dictionary of Biography Online - Bobby Pearce: http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A110183b.htm

Gal Fridman: The First Israeli Gold Medallist

The modern Olympic Games and Jewish athletes have not had the best of relationships. Unfrtunately, due to some very un-Olympic attitudes towards race and religion the efforts of the Jewish athlete have not been always marked with acceptance and reward. For example, in the 1936 Olympics at Berlin two American sprinters (Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller) were dropped at the last minute by the coach and team management of the US 4x100 metres men's relay team. Whilst there was no definitive evidence they were dropped because of their Jewishness, it certainly left a bad taste in these two competitor's mouths and marred the success of Jesse Owens (winning his fourth gold medal of the Berlin Olympics after entering the team as a replacement). At those same games German Jewish athletes were either banned, ostracised or made Aryan by tacit approval (in the latter case the German female fencer Helen Mayer is the prime example), whilst Avery Brundage fought any moves for a pro-Jewish protest boycott of the Berlin Games in part due to his own anti-semitism. Under that same Nazi regime one of the first gymnastic multiple gold medallists Alfred Flatow (a prominent Jewish sports administrator immediately prior to the games) was killed at the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

Even after the establishment of the state of Israel Jewish athletes have not fared well. The Munich massacre in 1972 has left a sad and shameful stain on the modern Olympic movement, and the 11 Israeli victims of that tragic affair can be considered the most unfortunate recipients of the most un-Olympic hate ever to have spoiled what is ideally aimed as an event that celebrates youth and peace through sport. Putting aside the politics of the background issues, with those deaths in 31 Harold Connellystrasse and at Furstenfeldbruck airstrip in 1972 the Olympic Games was again the setting for unacceptable anti-semitism, and this in turn could be argued to have contributed to Israeli attitudes to the games.

Yet whatever the political and social cost, the discrimination and the mistrust, Jewish athletes have attended the Olympics year after year, and Israel itself has been to every summer games from Helsinki up to Athens (except for Moscow) since 1952. However in all those games not one gold medal was ever won by an Israeli athlete. It took until 1992 and Barcelona, when female judoka Yael Arad won silver in the women's half middleweight final, for an Israeli Olympian to win even a medal of any type. Therefore with such a sad history of maltreatment for Jewish athletes and little success for the Israeli Olympic teams over history, the achievement of Gal Fridman at Athens must be considered as one of the great moments in Olympic history.

Fridman was already successful as an Israeli Olympian going into the men's sailboarding regatta at Athens, having previously won a bronze at the Atlanta games in the same event. Unfortunately a lack of success in the lead up to Sydney saw him not participate there. Almost quitting the sport and even turning to sports like cycling, he returned to the Mistral sailboard by 2002. He then went on to medal at world championships leading up to 2004, thus entering the Athens games he was one of the favourites. Amongst his lead challengers were Niklos Kaklamanakis, the Greek gold medallist in 1996 and lighter of the cauldron at the Athens opening ceremony, and the Brazilian Ricardo Santos. In Fridman's favour was the fact he had trained regularly at the Agios Cosmas sailing venue, plus perhaps superstitiously Gal's name in Hebrew means 'wave'.

The mistral sailboarding event in Athens consisted of 11 faces, with one result to be dropped from the overall competition assessment. Fridman sailed consistently, and prior to the final race was in second place behind the Brazilian Santos, having had two first places and only one recorded placing lower than fifth. To win gold he needed to finish five places above Santos, whilst keeping an eye on Kaklamanakis. Appropriately, Fridman's tactics meant he kept pace with Santos until, utilizing a wind change the Israeli bolted from the Brazilian, surging into second place. Santos tried to then stay with the Greek, but Kaklamanakis also outpaced the young Brazilian, with the three leading contenders now behind British sailboarder Nick Dempsey.

At the final post of the eleventh race of the Mistral event in Athens Dempsey came in first, which did no harm to Fridman's or Kalklamanakis's rankings and actually promoted the British sailor into the bronze position. Fridman came in second, waving his arms in the air celebrating his overall victory on points before diving into the waters with his coach, brother and the female Israeli Mistral entrant Lee Korvits. Gal Fridman had snared the gold coming from behind Santos, with an overall result 10 points better than silver medallist Kaklamanakis.

As the whole of Israeli watched that final race, then celebrated Fridman's victory the memory of past sadness and the fate of Jewish Olympians was still present, adding more meaning to the gold medal than even its status of being the first for Israel. Gal Fridman made certain that the victims of the Munich massacre were in his thoughts:

"I hope they are happy up there...When I return to Israel I will go to their memorial place and show them the gold medal."

Later in the evening of August 25th, 2004 Fridman, Kalkamanakis and Dempsey were presented their medals. Alex Gilady, long time IOC delegate from Israel was there to hang the gold around Gal Fridman's neck and then, for the first time in Olympic history Israel's national anthem the Hatikva was played and the blue Star of David flag raised above those of Greece and of the United Kingdom. After 52 years of waiting, after 11 tragic deaths and 108 years of mistrust, anti-semitism and minimal acceptance from an Olympic movement which supposedly has higher ideals, a Jewish Israeli Olympian had won gold.



Sources:

• IOC Official Biography: Gal Fridman http://www.olympic.org/uk/athletes/profiles/bio_uk.asp?PAR_I_ID=91986
• Israel News Agency: Israel Wins Her First Gold Medal: http://www.israelnewsagency.com/israelolympicssports486660.html
• "How Hitler Stole The Berlin Games" by Guy Walters, John Murray Press, 2004
• "The Complete Book of the Olympics" by David Wallechinsky, Aurum Press 2004
• Wikepedia: Gal Fridman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal_Fridman