Crimson's 'Four With Cox' Holds Workouts in Tokyo

The only five Harvard men in the Olympics--four rowers and their coxswain--started workouts in Tokyo this week, with the start of the Olympic Games just ten days away.

Harry and Tom Pollock, Jim Tew, Paul Gunderson, and coxswain Ed Washburn make up the first four-oared boat from Harvard to enter the Olympics since 1936. The earlier crew lost to a German boat.

The 1964 team made the Olympic team by a fairly roundabout route. All five men were members of Harvard's national-championship eight, which entered the Olympic trials and lost by two lengths to the Vesper Boat Club eight from Philadelphia.

Victory in Trials

Coach Harry Parker's boat had beaten every college crew in the country and Parker felt his oarsmen were among the best. He broke up the boat into two "fours," and the "four with cox" proved him accurate by scoring a one-length victory in a second series of Olympic trials in August.

That put them into the Tokyo games, but from now on the competition gets rougher.

In the last three Olympics Czech, Italian, and German crews have won the four-oars with cox event. In 1964, the odds-on favorites are the Russians. A four from Dusseldorf rowed them into the water in Rome in 1960, and the exhausted USSR four fell back to fourth place after running second most of the way.

Russians Favored

But this year Russian clubs are generally conceded to have the best rowers around. A prize Lithuanian eight beat Germany's 1960 Olympic champions this summer and other Russians mopped up most of the events at Henley.

A U.S. crew last won the fours in 1948, but Harvard's can't be counted out. They've been rowing together a year, less than most of the other crews, but their record is impressive--only a half-length loss in practice to Vesper's "middle four" mars their record.