Talk:1965 European Rowing Championships

Absence of East Germany's women

I've searched long and hard in contemporary East German newspapers why their women were not entered but have drawn a blank. The first mention of the 1965 women's championship, with specific reference to women rather than the men's competition a week later, was on the day after the championships finished. Rather curious. There's a long entry for each European Rowing Championships women's event on a website called "Rowingstory", written from the perspective of the competitors from Great Britain. Having now written a few entries for the European Rowing Championships, I have to say that this website aligns very well with contemporary media reporting. So although it's a blog, I would rate it as a WP:RS. With that in mind, the entry for 1965 puts three theories forward as to why the East Germans did not show up, and any one of them is entirely plausible. I propose to include the three theories in the article, identify them as such, but given that it's a blog, I thought I'd ask here first what other editors think of that. I shall notify WikiProject Rowing separately. What I did find in the news media was that the women had a clean out in 1965, with the younger rowers not performing well at their national champs. But cross-checking this with results for their previous champs, there were many old hands that became national champ again (in W1x, W2x, W4x, and W4-; I didn't check the eight), and it certainly does not explain why they did not show up at the Euro champs three weeks later: Gisela Jäger, Renate Boesler (no article yet; she is the aunt of Petra and Martina Boesler), Helga Richter, Hannelore Göttlich, Monika Sommer, Ursula Pankraths, Brigitte Amm, and Irmgard Brendenal-Böhmer. So the contemporary reporting simply doesn't make sense.

MisterSynergy, do you know of a good resource for 1965 West German newspapers where you can do a text search across a number of publications at the same time? Just like the facility offered by the Berlin State Library for East German media? Schwede66 22:28, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

I can’t help much, I don’t even manage to log in to ZEFYS any longer to read the contemporary East German reports. There is a short note here at rudern.de (in 1965 the East Germans did not participate in the German qualifiers against the West Germans, but no reason is given there). Another question: what about the East German men’s team? They did not medal at all, but did they compete? —MisterSynergy (talk) 23:12, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Article isn't finished yet. I think I did see something about the German qualification trials, but the situation was (still) different for the men compared to the women, with West Germany being very dominant. Schwede66 23:47, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Ok, the East German men didn't go to Duisburg either. There is no mention anywhere of the qualifying event, so I guess they just did not compete at that one, confirming MisterSynergy's note above. Schwede66 19:30, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Good to know; but this still leaves the open question why they did not go, and the options still are: not competitive enough (unlikely, at least for the women's team), they didn't want the athletes to visit West Germany, or they wanted to increase pressure on FISA to allow two German teams (which was the case from 1966 on). —MisterSynergy (talk) 15:33, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

I've included the three theories as put forward in the blog. My hunch is that all three aspects contributed to the decision to not have the East German rowers compete that year. Schwede66 19:11, 2 February 2018 (UTC)