I didn’t know who Alan Shealy was before I watched this video but the fact that it started with Patton’s Speech and ended with an interview with Harry Parker (that was shot just a few weeks before he died) got me interested in who he was and what his relationship with rowing was. After some Googling I found out that he’s a seven-time national team member, a two-time Olympian, and a three-time IRA national champion, in addition to being the stroke of the infamous “Rude and Smooth” crew in 1974 and 1975.

This paragraph from this article in Sports Illustrated made me laugh too. I can’t imagine anyone being able to get away with this nowadays…

“And the familiar cocky voice was that of Harvard’s Alan Shealy—brilliant at stroke, profane (though less so than last year) and Washington’s pet hate. To the forlorn Huskies, the posh trappings of Harvard rowing and the abrasive Shealy were symbols of decadence that had been fuel for the fire that possessed them. All week they had taken turns stoking the blaze.

And Shealy, enjoying himself, played them like a puppet master. Two days before the big race, during a coxswains’ race, he sat aboard a moving launch and manned Harvard’s funnelator, a powerful sling devised for launching water balloons, and one of them squarely hit a Husky cox.”

Or this (from this New York Times article)…

“The Huskies from Washington know Shealy well. In a dual regatta at Seattle last June, Shealy yelled out, “So long, Huskies,” as Harvard took command at 500 meters and rowed away.”