{"id":20375,"date":"2025-10-19T10:47:02","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T08:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesmartcityjournal.cibeles.net\/sin-categoria\/how-old-are-you-70s-youre-jv-maybe-next-year\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T10:50:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T08:50:11","slug":"how-old-are-you-70s-youre-jv-maybe-next-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thesmartcityjournal.com\/en\/articles\/how-old-are-you-70s-youre-jv-maybe-next-year","title":{"rendered":"\u2018How old are you? 70s? You\u2019re JV, maybe next year.\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Olympic gold winner Bill Becklean has been at crew for 75 years, will be coxing boat of octogenarians at Head of Charles<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Bill Becklean feels blessed to have taken up crew 75 years ago, when, as a 14-year-old from Missouri, someone told him he\u2019d make a decent coxswain for his high school team.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI came from Kansas City, Missouri, and never heard of anything called \u2018crew,\u2019\u201d said Becklean, 89, who had traveled east to attend Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. \u201cI weighed 80 pounds, and somebody said, \u2018Well, you ought to be a coxswain,\u2019 and I was. Look where that has taken me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

His most notable stop may be the 1956 summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, when his Yale University eight, with Becklean as coxswain, won gold. The latest will come Sunday on the Charles, when he will steer an extraordinary eight \u2014 one full of octogenarians \u2014 competing in the 2025 Head of the Charles: the Director\u2019s Challenge mixed eights.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re probably going to finish last,\u201d Becklean, M.B.A. \u201968, confessed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Becklean\u2019s boat is number 27 in the 30-boat field, which features eights with mixed men and women crews.<\/span><\/p>\n

Becklean, who first volunteered for the Head of the Charles in 1966, is familiar with the three-mile course, which winds up the river separating Cambridge and Boston, passing under six bridges. He\u2019s watched as the regatta has become one of the world\u2019s largest and most prestigious.<\/span><\/p>\n

Catherine Saarela, adult recreational sweeps coordinator at Brighton, Massachusetts-based Community Rowing Inc., is more sanguine about the Becklean\u2019s group\u2019s prospects.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is a \u201cset boat,\u201d she said, meaning it\u2019s well-balanced as it moves through the water, with consistent timing from the rowers, which increases efficiency and speed. Saarela said that\u2019s probably because some of the rowers typically row singles, where they only have themselves to rely on to keep the boat centered and stable.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not the fastest boat,\u201d Saarela said. \u201cBut it also hasn\u2019t been the last boat to finish.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea of an all-octogenarian boat was inspired by Saarela\u2019s father, also an octogenarian and a cancer survivor.<\/span><\/p>\n

About four years ago, he got an award from the YMCA for swimming 1,000 miles over the last 10 years, a feat Saarela pondered during her commute from her New Hampshire home to CRI\u2019s Harry Parker Boathouse in Brighton. Once the idea of a boat crewed by rowers in their 80s popped up, it stuck around.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was coaching, and I\u2019d go out and totally profile people: \u2018Hey, do you know anyone who\u2019s 80 and still rowing?\u2019\u201d Saarela said. \u201cThey\u2019d say, \u2018I\u2019m not 80,\u2019 and I\u2019d say, \u2018I didn\u2019t ask if you were 80. Who do you know?\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Seat by seat, she built the boat.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was fellow referee Bill Barrett who suggested Becklean as coxswain.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the other referees, who\u2019s in his 80s, said, \u2018Hey, you need a coxswain. You should reach out to Bill Becklean, he\u2019s a gold medal coxswain,\u2019 and I reached out,\u201d Saarela said. \u201cThat\u2019s how Bill became my partner in crime in all this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Saarela is just the latest to pull toward a shared goal with Becklean.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the decades he\u2019s helped and been helped by many, in the sport and out, from the other skinny kids he shared a boat with at Phillips Exeter, to fellow volunteers in the Head of the Charles\u2019 early years, to Yale\u2019s medal-winning crew in Melbourne.<\/span><\/p>\n

The road to gold was anything but smooth, Becklean said. Because Australia is in the southern hemisphere, the summer games were held in November, months after the end of the collegiate rowing season.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead of staying and training over the summer, the crew scattered to vacations and summer jobs.<\/span><\/p>\n

They did get together on Connecticut\u2019s Thames River for training sessions in the middle of August, but when the fall term started, the crew parted ways, and six, including Becklean, went back to campus.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe first heats in Australia were the first race we\u2019d had since the Olympic trials,\u201d Becklean said.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it showed. They lost their opening heat, which sent them to the repechage race, where losers of the early heats get a chance to fill open semifinal slots. Shaken by the initial loss, they won their repechage, then beat favorite Australia in the semifinals.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both boats advanced, however, and Yale beat Australia again to win the gold.<\/span><\/p>\n

Becklean graduated from Yale with an electrical engineering degree in 1958 and spent the next eight years out of rowing and in the Navy, where he worked on nuclear subs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then he left for Harvard Business School and the Charles River, where he couldn\u2019t help noticing the Head of the Charles regatta, then in its second year. He approached legendary Harvard crew coach Harry Parker about volunteering.<\/span><\/p>\n

A year later he joined the Cambridge Boat Club, where he now has been a member for more than 50 years. He is a past commodore and counts his coaching duties for Cambridge Rindge and Latin\u2019s boys\u2019 crew, based at the club, as \u201cthe best thing I\u2019ve ever done.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI know this will change those boys\u2019 lives, and it does,\u201d Becklean said. \u201cThey learn how to show up on time. They learn how to follow instructions; they learn how to operate as a team; they learn that what you put in is what you get out. There are so many lessons that will be with them for their lives.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Since then, he\u2019s competed in the Head of the Charles regularly, coxing several boats and rowing, in singles or doubles, in 10 or 12 years.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI have a doubles partner that I\u2019ve rowed with for 25 years. We rowed it probably 10 times and won it one year, the first that they had an award for 70-year-olds,\u201d Becklean said. \u201cIt was the year we turned 70, and we were the only boat in our age group. Then it got very competitive.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Rooting for Becklean this year will be another rowing partner, Malcolm Salter, a former Harvard lightweight rower who\u2019s been rowing doubles with him for several years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Salter, HBS\u2019 James J. Hill Professor of Business Administration, emeritus, and faculty fellow for Harvard lightweight crew, said he met Becklean six years ago when he visited the Cambridge Boat Club.<\/span><\/p>\n

The two started talking and discovered that Becklean had been a student of Salter\u2019s when Becklean was working toward his M.B.A. Now Salter, four years Becklean\u2019s junior, has become something of a student of his.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy goal is basically to be Bill Becklean,\u201d Salter said. \u201cMy goal is to be able to be rowing in the Head of the Charles when I\u2019m 90.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Becklean, Salter said, has an eye for the sport\u2019s more technical elements, things that can slow the boat: the errant splash of a misplaced blade or a seat sliding slightly out of time. Despite that, he doesn\u2019t lose sight of the fact that rowing should be fun.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe has total command and control of the boat because he has so much knowledge. He\u2019s the ultimate collegial competitor,\u201d Salter said. \u201cHe\u2019s a carrier for the sport. He\u2019s very supportive. He lives it. He loves to talk about it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Word has gotten out in the racing community, Saarela said, and older rowers are calling her.<\/span><\/p>\n

This year \u2014 the fourth for the all-80s crew \u2014 she\u2019ll have 15 rowers, with Becklean in the coxswain\u2019s seat.<\/span><\/p>\n

Seven will row downstream from Community Rowing on the Charles River to the race\u2019s start near Boston University\u2019s DeWolfe Boathouse, and seven more will race the three miles back.<\/span><\/p>\n

One intrepid octogenarian will row both ways.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI have not had a hard time filling seats,\u201d Saarela said. \u201cI\u2019ve got one woman from Saratoga Springs who called me and wanted to do this. Plus, I\u2019m a referee, I travel around, and I talk about it. I\u2019ve got people who come up to me in their 70s: \u2018Do you have an extra spot?\u2019 I say, \u2018How old are you? 70s? You\u2019re JV, maybe next year.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Becklean rowed his last single a few years ago after what for him was the \u201cperfect\u201d race: He had trained hard; conditions were ideal; he rowed well; and beat his desired time. He still rows doubles, though, and isn\u2019t considering stepping away from the coxswain\u2019s seat.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI love the sport. My closest friends are all rowers. There are times when I\u2019m driving in here and I say, \u2018Do I really want to do this?\u2019 but I\u2019ll tell you, every time I come back from having rowed, it just feels so good,\u201d Becklean said. \u201cI\u2019ll keep doing it as long as I can get in a boat. It\u2019s been great fun.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Image: Edward Wertheim (from left), James Draper, DeLane Anderson, Peter McGowan, Judith Gillern, Priscilla Hoffnung, Elspeth McLaughlin, Anne Faber, and Becklean.<\/span><\/p>\n

Text: <\/span>Alvin Powell<\/b><\/p>\n

Harvard Staff Writer<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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