GALES FERRY, Conn. - The "Most Interesting Man in the (sports) World" has been teaching young student-athletes how to become critical thinkers, leaders and winners for half a century.
Steve Gladstone is a perfect fit for the Dos Equis advertisements with his stately, debonair appearance and his anchorman-like voice. If you listen to him speak about anything – especially sports – you see how the sun-tanned coach wearing his "Y" cap could work in any of those beer commercials.
Gladstone, the Craig W. Johnson '68 Head Coach of Yale Heavyweight Crew, completes his 50
th racing season on Saturday and has been a winner throughout a storied coaching career that spanned five schools and included a stint as Cal's director of athletics.
He has coached the most (14) IRA National Champions while also lifting trophies at Henley, Eastern Sprints, the PAC-10 Championships, the Head of the Charles, the San Diego Crew Classic and other events, while his honors include the US Rowing Medal and coach of the year for the IRA, EARC and Ivy League.
Gladstone, who began his career as Princeton's freshman heavyweight coach in 1966 and has worked at Yale since 2011, was the varsity lightweight coach at Harvard before going West for multiple varsity heavyweight stints at Cal sandwiched around a 13-year Brown stint. He also served as U.S. National Team coach and U.S. Olympic Team selector, while he had a TV commentating role at two different Olympic Games. Not surprising given that his father, Henry Gladstone, was a newscaster and United Nation's correspondent for 32 years on WOR Radio in New York.
Adding to the legacy is the belief that Gladstone is the only former Division I collegiate athletics director currently serving as head coach of any sport at a DI institution. Yale has not had a coach with that type of AD experience since football legend Carmen Cozza served as the Bulldogs' director in 1976-77.
The impact of his work at Yale is in the numbers. The Eli heavyweights have won five national championships all time and three have come under Gladstone. There have been 15 EARC titles since 1948, and six have been led by the current coach. Yale has been Rowe Cup (Sprints overall surpremacy) Champions six times, four of which came with Gladstone at the wheel. In addition, the Bulldog program has one Ten Eyck Trophy for overall performance at IRAs, and that was last week at Mercer Lake.
While the numbers say it all, his oarsmen qualify them in a variety of ways.
"Fifty seasons of coaching means 50 different squads," said Paul Jacquot '18, a 2020 Olympian for Switzerland. "Yet, Coach Gladstone not only remembers which lineup won which races, which is impressive in and of itself because he has had his fair share of victories, he also remembers every squad member personally. Coach Gladstone is as passionate about dominating the sport of rowing as he is about turning boys into men!"
Sholto Carnegie '18, who rowed for Great Britain at the same Summer Games, recalls his coach's unique talent.
"Steve has a rare ability to not only pick a crew that totally complements one another, but he also inspires complete confidence in his athletes' ability to execute their best strokes on race day. In my current training with the British National team, I still find myself applying the lessons I learned under Coach Gladstone on a daily basis."
Tom Dethlefs was an alternate at the 2016 Olympics and has been on 10 national teams, won numerous world championship medals and set two world records. He saw Coach Gladstone in his early Yale days.
"Steve brought with him a wealth of knowledge about the level and intensity of rowing that it takes to succeed in college and on the national team. Being able to benchmark myself against Olympians that he had coached was motivating and a lot of fun," said Dethlefs. "More than anything though, Steve brought a strong sense of purpose and responsibility to the boathouse that has stayed with me across all the different teams I have competed with."
Gladstone has seen a lot during his rowing life, however reacting to a pandemic was unprecedented.
Jack Morton '22 recalled the way his coach handled the last two years on campus.
"One of my favorite examples of Steve's dedication, bordering on obsession, with rowing is last spring when there were seven athletes on campus. Every day he would show up excited and keen to make strides forward despite our inability to even get one full eight out on the water. The seniors later learned that while Steve was fully invested in the seven guys he was working with each day, behind the scenes he had pages and pages of notebooks where he was analyzing potential lineups for the '22 season. Constantly thinking about the physical attributes of each athlete and theorizing about which side he should put each freshman on to maximize the boat speeds for the following year's season. This is just one of the countless memories that we all have regarding Steve and composes only a small aspect of what makes him the legendary coach he is."
When you spend over half a century trying to win contests, you are in a very exclusive club, one that includes unprecedented success. Interestingly related to this week's Regatta, former Harvard crew coach Harry Parker, who had 51 consecutive racing seasons for the Crimson up until 2013 when he was 77, is also in the unique club. Parker, who shared the same boathouse with a Harvard lightweight coach named Gladstone for four years (1969-72), won three IRA titles.
Gladstone, early in his career, figured out how to win races, which is obviously a key to his sustenance in sports, and he has tinkered with it ever since. The smallest details, like yelling to an oarsman through his megaphone during practice on the Housatonic River about "letting the inboard thumb dangle," are important to him, and attention to those technical aspects of rowing have fueled his passion for competition.
"We like the risk… we are drawn to the risk. You hate it during the season, but you are drawn to it," said Gladstone in reference to coaching and the results of their work.
But there is a more profound goal that has impacted this legends' longevity in college athletics.
"If you are doing this the right way, you can have a real impact on the lives of the people you are coaching. Winning another championship would not impact my life one bit. It's much more about what I brought to the people I've worked with," said Gladstone, who turned 81 the day after his three boats all won Gold at the 2022 EARC Sprints.
Robert Hurn, captain of Gladstone's first Yale IRA champion in 2017, saw deeper meaning in the coach's words and actions.
"Steve's coaching went far beyond physiology and the mechanics of a rowing stroke. What Steve taught was a philosophy and a process for facing challenges, as an individual and as part of a collective. We didn't win races because he taught us how to be fast. We were fast because he taught us how to win races," said Hurn.
Very few college or pro coaches have 50 seasons under their belts, and it's unlikely we will see many more.
The most interesting man in the [sports] world continues to amaze.
