Guy Nickalls

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Guy Nickalls

Vanity Fair "Spy" Cartoon from 1889
Born November 13, 1866(1866-11-13)
Died July 08, 1935
Education Eton college and Magdalen College Oxford,
Occupation rower
Children Guy Oliver Nickalls
Parents Tom Nickalls & Emily Quilhampton

Not to be confused with his son (British rower and Olympic silver medalist Guy Oliver Nickalls), Guy Nickalls (born November 13, 1866 - died July 8, 1935) was a British rower who competed in the 1908 Summer Olympics as a member of the British eight that won gold.

The son of Tom Nickalls (a jobber on the stock exchange and one of the founding members of London Rowing Club), Guy was one of twelve children, of whom his brother Vivian was also a successful oarsman. His mother, Emily, was the first woman to climb Mont Blanc and Monta Rosa in the same week.[1]

Educated at Eton college where he was known as "Luni" due to his reckless behaviour[2], Nickalls played football with success, and when not engaged in athletically breaking his bones or risking his neck, he would row. At Eton Nickalls won the Junior Sculling (1884), the School Pulling (1885-86), and School Sculling (1885). His ability was soon noticed and he secured the four seat in the Eton Eight, carrying off the Ladies’ Challenge Plate at Henley in 1885.

Nickalls went up to Magdalen College, Oxford in 1887, ready to row down all comers. At Oxford he won the University Sculls (1887), the University Pairs (1888-90, with W.F.D. Smith once, then twice with Lord Ampthill, and the University Fours (1886 and 1889), went head of the river in 1888 with Magdalene, and rowed for Oxford in the Boat Race for five years (from 1887 to 1891) losing three races and winning two. He was O.U.B.C. President in 1890.

He was Captain of Leander in 1892 and 1897.

Olympic medal record
Men's Rowing
Gold 1908 London eights

From 1913 through 1916 Nickalls coached Yale, enticed to New Haven by Averell Harriman and a sufficient salary to help see his two sons through Eton. Though his Yale crews won two of the three years he was there, Nickalls found the environment stressful and foreign. He was partly to blame, by spouting opinions better left unsaid or if said, certainly not within earshot of the attentive rowing press. Yet such remarks -- “Their paddling is bad, their rowing, worse” (about the Yale 1916 crew)[3] -- were wholly in line with his personality: as O.U.B.C. President, he nearly scotched the 1890 Boat Race by calling the Cambridge crew “probably a poorer lot than usual” in an official letter to his counterpart, S.D. Muttlebury.[4]

Nickalls tried to join the army in 1914 on the outbreak of war, but was turned down on account of age. By late 1917 the army had a change of heart, sending him to France, then age fifty, as a Captain in the 23rd Lancashire Fusiliers in charge of physical and bayonet training.

On July 6, 1935 Zürich Rowing Club won the Stewards’. “Thank God I have been spared to see what I believe to be the finest four of all time,” Guy told Gully. The next morning, Guy was in an auto accident en route to Scotland to fish, and died the following evening.

Contents

[edit] Achievements

[edit] Olympic Games

  • 1908 - Gold, Eight (racing in a Leander crew representing the United Kindgom)

[edit] Henley Wins

[edit] Wingfield Sculls

  • 1887
  • 1888
  • 1889



[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^  Guy Nickalls, Life's a pudding :an autobiography, 1939
  2. ^  “Wingfield Sculls” (Spy), Vanity Fair July 20, 1889
  3. ^ G. Nickalls, quoted in T. Mendenhall, The Harvard-Yale Race and the Coming of Sport to the American College, p. 298.
  4. ^ G. Nickalls, quoted in Windsor Magazine, p. 109 (July 1896)
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