The Red Rowers

Early one morning last week, Lieut. Colonel Sir Geoffrey Betham, secretary of a tony country club on the Thames, went out for a quiet spin in his motor launch. As he churned along the rowing course at Henley, Sir Geoffrey came upon a strange sight. A slim figure was moving along the bank, methodically measuring with a length of chain. Peering through the grey English drizzle, Sir Geoffrey recognized Nikolai Kolosovsky, coxswain of the crack Russian Eight that was entered in the Henley Royal Regatta. "By gad," exploded Sir Geoffrey, "they're checking the course! These Russians! They are incredible--efficiency in the extreme." The Russian oarsmen are not only efficient, they are good. Included in the first Russian squad, Czarist or Soviet, ever sent to the 125-year-old Henley classic are the fine eight who were barely beaten by the great U.S. Navy crew in the 1952 Olympics. In a floodtide of entries from 30 countries, the Russians came to England the top-heavy favorites to take home the Henley's Grand Challenge Cup.

Food Like Home. When the visitors arrived a fortnight early, the little town of Henley shrugged off its normal absent-minded air and pitched in to help them train. At first the Russians--nine assorted coaches and chaperones, a chubby lady physician and 23 earnest oarsmen--were split into two groups, one to reside at the Jolly Waterman, a tavern about a mile from the river, the other at Fair Mile, twelve-room Victorian residence of Reginald Pearce, a Henley jeweler. Said Mrs.

Joe Lewis at the tavern: "We're ordering six bottles of vodka and practicing pouring it into tiny glasses until they almost overflow. We hear that's Russian style." Said Mrs. Pearce: "I'm installing TV.

Perhaps it will help relationships." But the Jolly Waterman's vodka went unpoured. The Russians billeted there objected to the long hike to the Thames, and all moved in with the Pearces, who promptly left a note for the milkman to start delivering 40 pts. a day. At the table the crew fell to with precision, putting away great piles of sliced bread, steaming bowls of soup intended to approximate shchee (Russian cabbage soup), potatoes, tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers, lamb, milk and soda water. On the river each day, they honed their choppy, elliptical rowing stroke to a fine edge.

Things Like Culture. The Russians' visit was big news in English newspapers, which dubbed them The Volga Boatmen and gave them more space last week than was allotted to pronouncements of the Foreign Ministry. Interpreter Evgeniy Gippenreuter, a bushy-haired Muscovite, did most of the talking for the delegation and soon tired of one persistent line of questioning. "Food!" he barked at an inquisitive British sportswriter. "Always questions having to do with food. Why do you never ask about important things like culture, like museums, like art?" Exasperatedly he admitted that a cook was coming up from the Soviet embassy in London to help Mrs. Pearce prepare such delicacies as borsch and kasha.

Launches filled with rubberneckers, he complained, were interfering with the Russian shells. "Here you ask launches to get out of the way," said Gippenreuter, throwing up his hands. "In our country we would have forbidden such things." What else did the Russians find different about England? "We find it hard to understand these signs we keep seeing that say 'Private Property.' As along the bank, where it says you cannot do fishing.--In our country we fish where we like. We have no private property." And there was something else: "Here only a narrow stratum of society can go in for rowing. It requires much money. This is not the case in our country. Just rank-and-file people, ordinary workers can do rowing in the Soviet Union." As regatta day neared, the Soviet's ordinary, working oarsmen stepped up their training. Russian binoculars flashed in the sun along the Thames, and stopwatches clicked when rival crews came out to practice. Explained Vladimir Kuchmenko, head of the Department of Aquatic Sports in the Committee of Physical Education and Sports of the Soviet Council of Ministers: "This is a sport to you, but we are over here to win."

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