THE SPORT OF ROWING
Dominic Keller
Jim Dietz setting the new course record of 7:02.43 on the Rotsee in 1971
His description of all things rowing has always been Kernschlag. Dietz: “The starter says, ‘Partez!’ and – bam! – you‟re off. You explode. All the frustrations, all the time that you‟ve put into training, it just comes out! “The first 400 meters is like an all-out sprint. Then you settle into your stroke until you hit the last 500 meters, when you explode again. The 500-meters-to-go buoy is always a different color, and you just watch it moving away. Then you hit 250 meters, and you forget about everything. It‟s all out, everything you have. If I‟m
ahead in the last quarter, nobody in the world‟s going to beat me.”5640
Technique In his competitive days, the most noticeable aspect of Dietz‟s sculling technique was his exaggerated and violent head lift on top of his near-maximal 75° arc of body swing, but closer inspection of Jim Dietz‟s technique surprisingly reveals the Classical concurrent Schubschlag force application associated with the German Democratic Republic. The aggressiveness 5640
Bill Bruns & Co Rentmeester, photographer, The Single Sculler‟s Search for Pain, Life Magazine, April 14, 1972, p. 73
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