Emory Clark
| Personal information | |||||||||||||
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| Full name | Emory Wendell Clark, II | ||||||||||||
| Born |
March 23, 1938 (age 78) Detroit, Michigan, U.S. | ||||||||||||
Medal record
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Emory Wendell Clark (born March 23, 1938 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American oarsman and Olympic champion.
He began his rowing career at Groton School on the Nashua River in Massachusetts in 1953. During his Fifth and Sixth Form years there he rowed in two (almost) undefeated A boats and has been inducted into the Groton School Athletic Hall of Fame. Clark then went on to Yale where, with Groton classmate Sam Lambert, they did not lose a race for two years, first in the Freshman Crew, then in the ’58 Yale Varsity. Captain of the crew his senior year, Clark was not so fortunate, losing in 1960 to a Harvard boat in which another Groton classmate, John Higginson, was in the two seat.
After a three year tour in the United States Marine Corps during which he served 13 months in the Orient, Clark joined Philadelphia’s Vesper Boat Club in 1964 where he rowed in the five seat of an eight assembled by Jack Kelly (Grace Kelly’s brother) which won the Olympic trials, beating a favored Harvard eight. Representing the United States, they went to Tokyo for the 1964 Olympic Games where, after losing in the first heat by 28/100s of a second to the famed Ratzeburg crew (undefeated in four years), Clark’s boat came from behind to beat the German eight in the final for the gold medal.[1]
Following the Olympics Clark joined up again with John Higginson and, with two other vintage oarsmen, raced in veterans’ regattas around the world for 25 years, winning more than their share of medals. He retired from competitive rowing in 2005, having been inducted into the US Rowing Hall of Fame in 1965.
A graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, Clark practiced law for 34 years in Lapeer County, Michigan, where he lived most of his life when he wasn’t racing in some far corner of the world.
Emory Clark has chronicled his journey to the Gold Medal in "Olympic Odyssey" published in 2014 by TaylorButterfield and available at either his website (www.olympicodysseytokyo64.com), at www.amazon.com, or on his Facebook page Emory W. Clark. (2)
References
(1) "Emory Clark". Olympics at Sports-Reference.com. Sports Reference LLC. Retrieved December 10, 2008.
(2) "Olympic Odyssey", Emory Clark, Taylor Butterfield, Lapeer, Michigan, 2014.