Page:Boating - Woodgate - 1888.pdf/143

 machinery, as being destructive to form, were fain to admit that after all, when properly managed, slides could produce as good form of body and shoulders as in the best of the old days, The Leander crew which won the G.C.C. at Henley in that year showed admirable sliding form. It was stroked by Mr. Goldie, who had rowed all his University races on a fixed seat. When he first took to a slide (for sculling) he fell into the same error as many other amateurs, almost entirely substituting slide for swing, But for this oversight he might have won both Diamond and Wingfield sculls. He soon saw his error, like Messrs. Rhodes and Way, and when he stroked Leander in 1875 no one could have recognised him as the same man who bad been contesting the Diamonds in 1872. ‘These three fuglemen strokes did much to clevate the standard of sliding among amateurs ; it was chicfly through their examples, crowned with success, that the earlier samples of sliding oarsmanship became better realised. Professionals remained blind in their own conceit, as is shown in another chapter, but from this date amateur oarsmanship completely gaye the go-by to pro- fessional exhibitions of skill and science in aquatics.