Gamesmanship Afloat

The Thames was full of practicing oarsmen last week, all correctly garbed in soggy sweat suits and all wearing the sober face of dedication to a gentleman's sport. Then an Australian named Stuart Mackenzie clapped a flippantly incorrect bowler on his head, put on a sardonic grin, and sallied out for a trial scull. Watching Mackenzie's parody of his prospective rivals, one old Cambridge rowing blue sniffed: "Just not the sort of thing done around here."

Yet, that is just the sort of thing Mackenzie has been doing around there for years. And rather successfully, too: by almost any standard. Stuart Mackenzie, 24, is international sculling's foremost character--and finest practitioner. Last week, warming up for a try at his fourth straight victory in the famed Diamond Sculls at Britain's Henley Royal Regatta, the 6-ft. 4 1/2-in., 196-lb. Mackenzie was skittering his one-man shell across the water like a nervous water bug. But. as always, he was relying almost as much on gamesmanship as on power to preserve his reputation as the world's best sculler.

Mackenzie has enraged opponents by disdaining to remove his sweat suit for important races. At the 1957 European championships. Mackenzie muffled himself to his ears, hobbled about on a cane, and shuddered violently whenever a breeze came by. Then he won in record time. He deliberately provokes false starts. Says he: "Waiting for the second start, you're calm and collected, while the opposition gets rather edgy. When we're off again, I usually pound away to the front while they make a mess of it."

Once out in front, Mackenzie may let the field catch up, then shoot away with the cry: "This is racing, don't you know?" Or, bored with his lead, he may actually lag back to join the pursuing fleet for a stretch: "You get sick and tired just bashing along all alone."

Son of a prosperous Sydney poultry farmer, Mackenzie earns a good living by chicken sexing, the occult craft of sorting out fluffy, day-old chicks by sex. A crack schoolboy rower, Mackenzie took up the individual sculls four months before the 1956 Olympics, learned fast enough to win a silver medal.

Matched against Poland's Teodor Kocerka in last week's Diamond Sculls, Mackenzie shot to his customary early lead, then settled down to his customary gamesmanship. At the finish. Mackenzie let Kocerka pull close before spurting hard to leave the Pole completely exhausted. He won by half a length and became the first man in the 20th century to take the Diamond Sculls four straight times. "It was a nice little dabble." said debonair Sculler Mackenzie. "But I was just playing."

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