Aussie at Oxford

From Putney Bridge to Mortlake, the crowds that walled the winding Thames last week recognized the 103rd rowing of the Oxford-Cambridge University Boat Race as a very special race indeed. But more than any other man on the river, Roderick Carnegie, 24. the mop-haired Aussie pulling Oxford's No. 7 sweep, was entitled to a bellyful of butterflies. Win or lose, this year the oldest of college boat races belonged to him. This was the payoff to "Rod's Revolution," the big test of his brash attack on the traditional style of British rowing.

Right from the start, the Cambridge crew, with two Americans in the boat, swung into a slow, traditional Oxford-Cambridge beat, their long, light-blue-bladed sweeps moving through a 90DEG arc, their bodies laid back, almost horizontal, at the end of each stroke. Oxford, though, rowed in an un-British style--their sweeps were shorter, the oarsmen pulled in shorter arcs, and at the end of each stroke the eight crewmen were still almost upright on their seats; they were depending on legs and arms for their drive.

Extra Weight. Oxford's early sprint earned a brief lead. Carnegie's boatmen slowly dropped back. Their No. 5 oar, Peter Barnard, biggest man in the boat, had collapsed. Carrying his dead weight was too much to ask of any style. At the end of the four-mile 374-yd. race, Cambridge was two lengths in front.

The big race was lost, but Rod Carnegie's Revolution had not really failed. It had jolted the staid foundation of British rowing, which has won few honors since World War II. Carrying one crewman as almost deadweight cargo, Oxford's American-style stroke had done so well it could no longer be ignored.

The oft-beaten Oxford crewmen were asking for a drastic change when they elected Carnegie their Boat Club president. The position carries with it extreme power, even the right to overrule the coach, and brusque Aussie Carnegie grabbed that power as if it were a sweep handle. An omnivorous scholar (he has degrees in physics and agriculture, is studying philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford's New College), he plunged into the science of rowing and plowed through two coaches who disagreed with his innovations (one lasted only a day). Neither man could stomach Carnegie's new style or his strenuous training methods. But the crew could and did.

Never Before. They rowed their light new shell as much as 20 practice miles a day, and while their Cambridge rivals performed a few conventional, delicate knee bends each day, they worked hard at weight-lifting and running. Last fortnight they made one 24-mile pull from

Putney all the way to the heart of London where no Oxford or Cambridge crew had been before.

"It was not the style that went wrong," said Carnegie when the race was over. "We did." Old Blues on the riverbank were inclined to huff: after all, Cambridge had won. And hearing the traditionalists crow in triumph, one of Rebel Carnegie's young revolutionaries mourned: "English rowing will probably remain outmoded now for another decade."

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