AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE
once every four years and say, “If we add women’s rowing to the Olympic programme, will you send a team?” The United States men always said no, because they didn’t think the women could do it and they didn’t think there were enough women racing to even pick a team from.
When I found all of that out, I realised we had to
prove to the men that we were serious about it, and that we could do it, and we could win races. For the next 17 years, that’s what I worked on.
CI: How did you go about championing the cause of women rowers to effect change? JI: We started the National Women’s Rowing
Association, and eventually merged with the NAAO to form the National Rowing Association, the governing body for US rowing now. That organisation has finally added me to their Hall of Fame now; I’m already on the rowing coaches’ Hall of Fame, and I have been recognised in other ways, but after this I don’t think I can be honoured any more!
CI: It’s amazing that those 17 years of your life culminated in the first US women’s rowing team at an Olympics. How did the team do? JI: When we finally did enter the Olympics in 1976 in Montreal, we won a bronze medal in the eight and a silver in the single sculls. I found out along the way that for any country to
say they would enter a team there had to be 43 countries that would guarantee they would send a team; we had to do a lot of politicking to get the men to say they would send a team. And 40+ other
countries also had to agree to send a team. Once the US said they would, other countries joined in and said they would too.
CI: So you were involved in Montreal as a coach?
JI: I had also been named manager of the team. A coach has to be taking a real crew, that is associated with that coach; as manager I had to make all of the arrangements for all of the team, for everybody on that team, to be there. To coordinate the whole thing.
CI: Sounds like a big headache… JI: It was huge! As part of that I also got to design the outfit they rowed in, I was the first to design the uni-suit but that was just a part of what I did. Had I been a little younger, I would have been on the team. By that time though I was 35 and that was considered over the hill.
CI: Is that a source of regret for you? JI: No, not at all. It would have been wonderful to get there, and had I been ten years earlier in my rowing career I could have gone and done well. But not at that age – and I had been so active in politicking and coaching, I really had not competed in a while. It would have been too much to do all of that AND train.
CI: There is also the cushion of being part of
the group of people that made the women’s team’s whole participation happen… JI: Absolutely.
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