Wonder Crew: The Untold Story of a Coach, Navy Rowing, and Olympic Immortality »

SUSAN SAINT SING, has both competed in and coached rowing at the college and national level, and is an authority on rowing history. She was a member of the 1993 US World Rowing Team and lives in Stuart, Florida.

THE WONDER CREW is the fascinating story of how the salty coach of the Annapolis crew team, Coach Richard Glendon, seized the sport of rowing first from the Ivy League schools and then the imposing British with a new style both uniquely American and very much his own. He took a group of young midshipmen with humble origins and dominated a sport once the domain of the privileged.

After stunning the Ivy Leagues in race after race, the US Naval Academy team won a shot at the Olympics. Their task was nearly impossible: for hundreds of years, the British Navy ruled the world and their supremacy of the seas naturally made them dominant in the sport of rowing. With the hopes of a nation, Navy went into the heart of Europe and in thrilling fashion defeated the heavily favored Brits to win the gold medal in 1920. With Glendon's new American style, the US won Gold for forty straight years, the longest winning streak in any single sport in Olympic history.

Rich in history, with brave characters, American ingenuity, and dramatic training and competition, THE WONDER CREW is the first comprehensive account of the 1920 Olympic Navy crew team and their inspirational coach who forged the dramatic story of their quest for Olympic gold.

Publishers Weekly

Sing (Spirituality of Sport) recounts the 1920 Olympics when the American crew team beat the British, who dominated the sport until then. Thoroughly researched and documented, the book explores the rise of the modern Olympic games and the history of rowing and the life of coach Dick Glendon-all provide context for the sport and its culture. In the vein of Wayne Coffey's The Boys of Winter, about the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, Sing creates a David vs. Goliath scenario made possible by an unconventional coach, who revolutionized the sport. Unfortunately, Sing's prose can be cumbersome ("A revealing and stunningly important article by Dr. Walter Peet, past coach of Columbia, proceeded to dissect and analyze the empirical thinking of Glendon that in a nutshell is a synopsis of the Glendon stroke, which is the basis of the newly found and tried American Orthodoxy"), but crew fans will appreciate how triumph in a sport lifts a nation. Photos. (July)

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Author's Note

1 The Old Man 7

2 A Corpse, an Olympics, and a Midshipman Named Nimitz 21

3 Navy's Love Affair with Crew 34

4 The War Years: 1914-1918 42

5 British Rowing Roots 55

6 Henley vs. the Olympic Games 64

7 American Scientific Oarsmanship and the Crew 71

8 The American Seasons Of 1919-1920 89

9 The British Season of 1920 101

10 The U.S. Olympic Trials 114

11 The Crossing 123

12 1920 Henley and Leander 145

13 Cutting Down 53

14 Vilvoorde 165

15 Opening Ceremony 177

16 Heats and Semis 184

17 The Olympic Race 192

18 A Radical Turn of Events 207

19 The Longest Streak 222

Epilogue 238

Notes 245