World Rowing Championships showcase sport's vitality

When was the last time you had to row a boat?

For former Olympian and rowing historian Bill Miller, advances in transportation did, indeed, have something to do with the decline of rowing as one of America’s most popular sports.

“It’s just not easy to understand rowing these days,” said Miller, who rowed for the United States Men’s Four team in the 1972 Olympics. “Everyone used to row 100 years ago, or at least most people. People don’t connect with the function of rowing now. People run, and they know about that. People swim, and they know about that.

“But rowing is not something people sit around and watch.”

After Miller finished as a competitor at the international level, he became interested in the history of rowing. He bought early 20th century rowing books and started reading about the history.

“Rowing was one of the most popular sports in this country,” said Miller, who lives in Sarasota part of the year and Duxbury, Mass., the rest. “I read unbelievable things.

“I never realized rowing was as popular as it was. They would get more than 100,000 people at a (University of) Washington crew race. In 1869, 500,000 people watched Harvard race Oxford on the Thames in London. They lined the banks.

“Remember Ali-Frazier? It was at that level.”

Miller said professional rowing existed early in the 20th century. “Tens of thousands of dollars would be bet on a race,” he said. “This was serious. One guy who was supposed to race was poisoned at noon before the race. Another guy had his two boats sawed in half.”

As America progressed, rowing slipped out of the limelight.

“Essentially, you had major wars,” Miller said. “The Civil War, World War I, World War II. Society changed a great deal. When you got up to the 1960s, other sports were more people to the eyeball. Rowing didn’t have the infrastructure to promote itself. Rowing fell off the sports pages, to the point you didn’t see it at all. Rowing also didn’t lend itself to commercialization.

“Ask people now who an Olympic champion is. They wouldn’t know.”

Miller didn’t know anything about rowing, either, when he attended Northeastern University. He hoped to walk on to the basketball team as a freshman, but the university was starting a rowing team and he got caught up in a “burst of enthusiasm.”

“They were looking for athletes, particularly tall athletes,” he said. “I was 6-foot-5.”

He didn’t realize he could be an exceptional rower or love a sport where an individual often is hidden. “You don’t want someone to stand out in an eight,” he said. “You’ve got eight people pulling an oar handle.”

He developed a love of the sport as an athlete, and his passion even increased after his competitive days were done.

So he is especially pleased the sport is enjoying somewhat of a rebirth in the United States as more people have become interested in participation sports and have grown to love rowing as a workout. Collegiate women’s rowing became a sport in 1997 and has grown from 98 teams to 146 in 2016. U.S. Rowing's top tier (competitive) membership rose 27 percent in 2015.

The 2015 U.S. Rowing Youth National Championships at Nathan Benderson Park in Sarasota set records for clubs (163), entries (385) and rowers (1,664). In 2003, the number of competing clubs was 70.

The growth of Nathan Benderson Park as the premier rowing facility in the United States generates interest in the Sarasota and Manatee counties area.

Miller said to have a Class A venue, FISA defines an area must find a body of water 2,000 meters that can accommodate a major event and satisfy requirements. “It’s very difficult to develop a site,” Miller said. People in Sarasota recognized they could have a site here. It took a lot of legwork and arm twisting and it was a major financial investment, but they did it.”

Owning a part-time home in Sarasota for 20 years, Miller said he has watched Nathan Benderson Park develop. He credits   de Manio for developing interest. “I visited him in 1990 and he had boat racks in his yard. He brought excitement to the high schools. With that little seed, he promoted high school rowing and he got parents excited. Momentum grew. People thought they could make this something special and now they have themselves one of the few Class A courses in North America.

Miller said landing the 2017 World Rowing Championships will help the sport continue to grow in the area. “When you have a major event, it brings a lot of attention to the general public,” he said. “I’m not getting calls from other parts of the country to talk about rowing, but I am from this area.”

He also credits “Boys in the Boat," Daniel James Brown's book that made it to No. 1 on the New York Times Best Sellers list, as a reason for the sport growing in popularity.

“All these things chip away, bringing back public attention,” he said.