Show AMATEUR OARSMEN I Will be an Interesting Season on the Water CRACK DOUBLESCULL TEAMS Yales Weak Crew for the Thames Contest The City Amateurs Manhattan and Other Professional Oarsmen NEW YORK May 6 lSnSpecinl correspondence corre-spondence of TUB HEKALD The cpming season will be as full of interest upon the i water as the different rowing clubs can I make it The preparations for a season of maq aquatic sport were never before made upon such an extensive scale and certainly never were so many thousand young men keenly interested in results Yale which has pretty regularly beaten Harvard on the Thames since the adoption of the famous Cook stroke was seldom in so bad a case as this year The talk of a weak crew is always heard in Aprilboth at Harvard and Yale as regularly as the report of an irreparably ruined peach crop in Delaware but this time there seems tie b ti-e some foundation for the reports so far as Yale is concerned Two men only of last years victorious eight are to row Simms and Captain Brewster and the lat Ste tel the most valuable man of the crew has been ill all the spring though perhaps not quite so ill as it has pleased his partisans to represent Next to Brewster the public are most interested in the giant 201pound Heffelfinger who will probably row in threw th-rew for the first time The lightest man in the crew will probably be Balliet 160 or Simms 167 so that there is plenty of beef and brawn to rely upon if three weeks of Rob Cooks training can civilize and train it The Harvard men since their new rowing row-ing tank has been placed in working order are confident of giving the weakened Yales a harder pull this year than last Tho have been hard at work all winter on thank th-ank in the Cary building 1r1 f f t TAKING A SHOWER The University race though undoubtedly i the chiei rowing event in the year in tho eyes of the publicdoes not interest so many real amateur oarsmen as the National re eatta at Washington in August or even the New England and Middle States regattas in Juno and July Within cannon shot of the Buttery there are twentythree rowing clubs which are members of the Middle States Regatta association and most of these will send come representatives to tho National regatta as well heir aggregate membership runs well into the thousands and the number of young men who cherish the ambition to pull in championship crows must be fully half of the total Tho crews of eight are notin many cases fully made up yet and interest centres for the present in thc practice form of the double and single srullers As good a team perhaps as will be afloat i no accidents happen will be Freeth and Platt of the Yaruuas These young men won pretty nearly everything they tried their hands at last year but slipped up on the National losing I to the Toronto team as they claim through inability to see their opponents at the finish owing to the sun on the water and to a little trouble about the finish line George Freeth is one of the most extraordinary extra-ordinary oarsmen one ever looked upon At first glance you mieht take him for a consumptive almost a thin light young chap who weighs 140 pounds in training and less out of it But he is training those who row with him in the four and eight say it is impossible for him to row easy He simply cannot do it In 1889 he proved his mettle as a single sculler beating beat-ing everybody but Denny Donohue but this year he will probably not row single Platt who is a much heavier man will up hold the Varunas flag in the single shell rank The Manhattan Athletic clubs host I singles are Pitin ton Nagle and Hawkins and the double will be made up probably of the two latter Pilkington and Pildngton Nagle were the champions of 1SS9 Nagle won the Long Island championship single last year and Hawkins is a coming man About this same Hawkins thero is a good deal of criticism afloat just now among the other rowing clubs whose members charge that he is at least half a professional Hawkins has the leisure to spend his entire time on water and oarmcn want to know how he can afford it not being wealthy and how clerks and laborers who can only practice a few hours each week aro to contend fairly with men like him They would also like lke to know why a Manhattan Athletic club Manhatan Atbletc man should practice on Saratoga lake I is un denied that the Manhattans have a way of saying to promising athletes everywhere Come with us it shant cost you a cent in dues So it is charged wero Pilkington Pikington and Nsglo lured away from tho Metropoli tan Bicycle club It is charged also that the treasurer of the club will give a man like Hawkins his railroad ticket and 5100 for expenses to go to a regatta when it does not cost him anything like that sum There always more or less growling about this sort of thing among the poorer clubs which cannot afford this generosity and it may breaic out into open war at any time However professionals or not the Manhat tan men will have to work for whatever honors they win w k t9 SnARKEY BUSHMAN Another pair of phenomenally rapid scul lers are Messrs Bushman and Sharkey of the Ravenswoods They are in training on Newtown Creek a malodorous memorv with an occasional spin upon the East river itself when the tide is at the turn and the wind not too strong They rowed together for the first time last year and made an excellent ex-cellent record The rivalry between these two men and the Varuna Seniors will be especially keen as both belong to the Long Island association The Atalantasof Now York are striving to get up another race this year with the Yale university crew though in a similar simiar struggle last year tho Atalantas were badly beaten They will also put strong eight and fouroared teams Into the Middle States and National regattas The crack fouroared crew of the Atalantas is a curious curi-ous illustration of New Yorks cur tionalities It is always called the Dutch and Irish crew being made upjof the Dempsey brothers and the Lau brothers The Atalantas have the largest purely aquatio club In New York and are of the largest in the country and though they dot noM do-t have a powerful organization like the Manhattans at their back they put more oarsmen upon the water than any other club own more boats and send to the regattas regat-tas a good share of winners Their specialty speci-alty is crew work rather than doubles and singles and their great barges are a feature of the Harlem Adolph Rave who was for some years the champion of the Long Island association asa as-a single besides pulling in a winning lour for the Eagle cup will try his luck again for single championship honors He was not very prominent last season but his friends say he will show the benefits this year of lying fallow for falow one year The Metropolitans deserted by their old time champions Pilkincton and Nagle will try it is said Geoffert and OReagan the veterans and exchampions Here is the p possibility a hitch however for Geolert is one of those semiprofessionals against whom the most vigorous protest has been made and he cannot row unless reinstated by tho National association in the August regatta There is great need of a vigorous reorganization of tho amateur clubs and anal rfi a-nal settlement of the question what is an amateur and who are tho amateurs Rowing is very popular at present but it cannot remain so i amateurs are much longer expected to row against men who are i paid to beat them There Is no department of sport in which amateurs can permanently copeAvith men who make it a business as excellence is quite as much a question of training as of original capacity and a man who handles a yard stick all day cannot t scientifically f L rt1 I r 11y i l j i f A i I r h1 j ADOLPH RAVE New York oarsmen are somewhat exercised exer-cised about the future of their sport because I be-cause of the rapid degeneracy of the Harlem Har-lem 1 as a rowing stream I is already little more than a mud stream scarcely larger than tho Thames at London When the ship canal is completed i will be nothing more than a canal itself bulkheaded all its length and full of traffic Even now it is so crowded that good practice rowing is almost I al-most impossible The Hudson and Ea striver st-river are almost invariably rough with tide and wind There are very few days when I is possible to do much upon them with are shell except just before sunset when it a-re tide is right The bay at Bay Ridge is even worse It IB perhaps a sign of the future that the Varunas are looking towards Sheepshead bay for a refuge and the Metropolitans Metro-politans have already a club house on the Passaic aswell as on the Harlem Quieter waters must certainly he sought That in spite of the big andturbulent tidal arms of i the sea with which it Is their fate to contend con-tend the Now Yorltf oarsmen make such a bravo showing at tegatta after regatta is certainly In the highest degree creditable to their pluck and skill DAVID WEOIISLER |