The IOC added six women’s events to the Olympic rowing programme for 1976. FISA, the international federation, set the distance for women’s events at 1000 metres – half that for men – in the mistaken impression that women lacked endurance strength in the same way they lacked explosive strength compared to men. But the shorter course gave the advantage to athletes with more explosive strength and greater muscle bulk while taking it away from the longer-limbed, leaner and more lithe athletes. In its preliminary selection of women likely to enjoy and prosper in competitive rowing, East Germany sought out the same body type favoured for field events such as shot put and discus. Coincidentally this short, three-minute race gave added scope for the use of synthetic testosterone. It was another twelve years before FISA corrected this mistake by extending the women’s distance to 2000 metres in time for the XXIV Olympiad in Seoul in 1988.
Meanwhile, Jürgen Grobler’s next fortunate break after bringing Güldenpfennig from his provincial club to an Olympic medal was the introduction of the men’s quadruple sculls to the world and Olympic regatta schedule from 1974. The IOC agreed to the addition in 1971, but FISA only ratified the boat in its programme in October 1973, ten months before the world championship regatta in Lucerne the following August. It was hardly surprising that the 1974 East German team came closest to a total shut-out, when the men’s team won six golds and one silver medal, with the eight in fourth place. The GDR women were similarly dominant with four golds, a silver and a bronze medal.
The quadruple sculls, with the added weight of a coxswain, had been introduced to the women’s international programme in 1957, when East Germany won its first medal, a bronze for the crew from the Sports Institute of Leipzig. By the mid-seventies the East German system was producing a squad of scullers – both men and women – big and strong enough to win the single, double and quadruple categories. Athletes rotated between boats according to the finest calculations of coaches as to which event had the weakest foreign competition and could thus be won without necessarily absorbing all the talent. There was a bias in favour of the sculling events, which arose from the national policy – set out in full in Das Rudern – that the novice should begin with, and master, sculling and the technique of handling an oar in each hand. Most of their time was spent in the single-scull boat before they took up ‘sweep’ rowing, in which a single oar is held in both hands.
Das Rudern asserted: ‘It may be pointed out that youths can learn sweep rowing quite early on without hesitation, but on orthopaedic grounds, they should not be allowed to take part in sweep boat competitions until boys are fourteen and girls are sixteen. Learning periods for sweep rowing should not exceed one hour.’ The outcome of this early concentration on sculling up to the years of competition and selection is that the best and most able athletes were trained and tested as scullers first, and promoted to the elite programmes as scullers, leaving lower achievers to crew the bigger sweep boats.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s East German teams had an extraordinary record in the smaller sweep classes of coxless pairs and fours, but more patchy outcomes in the larger eights. The results in the two sculling events were also not so glittering because the single and double scullers were more likely to be pitched up against a lone outstanding athlete, representing a minor rowing nation that was not sufficiently organised to manage a coaching and training programme like East Germany’s.
The GDR single-sculling representative always had the hardest task of the team. Gossip was fed to western rowers by Ulli Schmied, two-time Olympic medallist in the double sculls, that the East German sculling squad would endeavour to race hard enough to stay in the top seven but not to be top dog because that would put them in the ‘hard to win’ singles event. They preferred to rank from fourth to seventh to ensure a place in the quadruple sculls. Good evidence backs Schmied’s claim. From 1962 to 1989 the winner of the GDR national team trials and most years, when the timetable allowed, the national championships was selected as the single sculler for the world or European championships (with the exception of 1981 when Rüdiger Reiche raced and won the single at the world championships in Lucerne after Uwe Mund had won the national title). The same principle applied to the double and quadruple sculls: the national champions, drawn from state sports clubs but trained as a composite group, were selected to travel abroad to represent their country.
Because of its unified nationwide programme, all top athletes were matched in style and technique. There were no eccentric coaches in outlying clubs with bees in their bonnets about laying back at the finish until their spines touched the breakwater or other stylistic flourishes. Das Rudern’s chapter on the technique of sculling is inflexible: ‘Since the ends of the inboard levers cut across one another in the pull and in the slide forward, one hand leads slightly and goes slightly under the other at these two points. The rule in the DRSV is: Left hand in front of and under the right hand.’ The passage concludes: ‘This general rule is important and must be binding to avoid losing time when national crews or racing teams are being assembled.’
In the Seventies and Eighties none of the major rowing nations followed such a simple policy, and consequently their top coaches found themselves teaching fully developed scullers to change the leading and higher hand to match new partners. The exceptional results for the GDR came at least as much from ruthless application of very simple rules as from any real difference in style.
The GDR coaches could take the next-best finishers after the single and double scullers had been selected and fit them into a quad boat with little or no adaptation required save to set the rigging to accommodate physical differences in height and reach. Jürgen Grobler was able to place Rüdiger Reiche (1m 98cm) and Güldenpfennig (1m 82cm) together in the 1974 quadruple scull, which won the world championship event. Filter assisted him in this by measuring the most efficient arc of each athlete – some taller, some shorter, some with a short torso and long arms, some blessed with longer legs. Filter then adjusted the length of each scull overall, and the amount of lever from the sculler’s hand to the fulcrum or ‘pin’ and the amount outboard of the pin. What Grobler and Filter devised – in collaboration with the biomechanical expert Schwanitz and all the other branches of their rowing committee – was a particular set-up from the boat’s keel to the tip of his blade for each athlete which would maximise his output while leading to greater uniformity of the whole crew. Thus, to the spectator, the crew looked perfectly uniform in its movements on the water but once they had lifted the boat out of the water and put it on the rack you could see that Reiche and Güldenpfennig were entirely different body types.
Decades later in 1991, when Grobler first started coaching Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent, he invited Klaus Filter to advise on the best boat and rig for them to employ. At that time Pinsent was 15 kg heavier and rowing in the bow seat which pushed the boat down into the water at high speed, creating unnecessary drag. Also Pinsent was trying to pull the boat round to demonstrate his strength on every stroke. It was mechanically easier for him because he was closer to the bows. Filter came to live with the boat-builders, the Ayling family, while he redesigned the hull and the material of its construction to suit the two athletes. While Grobler worked on their strength, fitness and race plan, Filter calculated and built the perfect platform for their exceptional strength. The crew improved from bronze medal in 1990 to gold in the 1991 world championships.
None of the small two- or three-athlete nations could compete in the quads. It was a boat type not much used or known in the West until the world received a masterclass from a crew coached by Grobler. By the early Seventies East Germany had 300 professionals involved in coaching and supporting its international rowing community. They were attached to one or other of the fifteen sports centres, and were drawn up from there to train composite international crews selected from several competing centres. Grobler’s star may have been hitched to Güldenpfennig, but he had other Magdeburg athletes like Martin Winter, Peter Kersten and Stefan Weisse up his sleeve. The quadruple scull was the perfect vehicle for his thorough and scientifically tested ambitions, offering the greatest speed per athlete of any