Coxless Pairs, Men

There was no particularly strong favorite for the coxless pairs event at the 1960 Summer Olympics: none of the most recent victors from the European Championships, British Empire and Commonwealth Games, or the Silver Goblets & Nickalls’ Challenge Cup at the Henley Royal Regatta (then considered the equivalent of a World Championship) were present in Rome. Nor did the previous Olympic champions and runners-up, the United States and the Soviet Union, return with their victorious members. The Americans sent Ted Frost and Robert Rogers of Seattle’s Lake Washington Rowing Club, because they had won the event at the 1959 Pan American Games. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, sent 1959 European runners-up Valentin Boreyko and Oleg Golovanov. The 1956 Olympic bronze medalists from Austria, Alfred Sageder and Josef Kloimstein, returned in another bid to capture gold. They were also the most recent European bronze medalists. Canadian Lorne Loomer, a 1956 Olympic champion in the coxless fours, was replaced by David Anderson in the coxed eights crew that would go on to win silver in that event, and sent to assist Keith Donald.

Of these nations, however, only the Soviet Union managed to win a heat in an opening round that saw strong performances from Germany, Italy, and Finland. The Americans and the Austrians survived to the semi-finals after the repêchage, however, with the latter winning a heat shared with the two global superpowers. The USSR regained its dominance in the final and won a convincing victory over the Austrians, who duked it out for silver with the Finns and emerged victorious by just over a tenth of a second, leaving Finland to settle for bronze.