About the Author

Peter Davis Mallory comes from a New England nautical family. His great great grandfather built whaling ships in Mystic, Connecticut. His father and grandfather both sculled while attending Yale.

Peter began his rowing career in 1959 as a coxswain at Kent School and lived down the hallway from Steve Gladstone, the only contemporary coach ever to win eleven IRA Championships. They remain good friends.

In 1966, Peter stroked the Lightweight Varsity Eight at the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in art history.

He was a mud angel, an angelo del fango, in Florence, Italy in the aftermath of the catastrophic flood of 1966, and he rowed daily out of Canottieri Firenze Comunali while he worked there restoring art. He gets by in four languages.

During his rowing career, he has represented Penn, Undine BC and Vesper BC in Philadelphia, Cambridge BC in the Boston area, and Long Beach RA, Mission Bay RA, San Diego RC and ZLAC RC in California. He has won four Canadian and two U.S. National Championships as an athlete.

In 1972, he was the lightweight single sculler on the American composite lightweight squad that toured Europe prior to the Munich Olympics.

He has coached at Penn, Long Beach State, LBRA, ZLAC, Mission Bay RA, San Diego State and San Diego RC. His crews have won more than fifty Canadian and U.S. National Championships. He has been a U.S. National Coach five times, and several of the athletes he coached have gone on to World and Olympic medals.

In 1976, Mallory took a graduate course on international sport at San Diego State University taught by the legendary Dr. Reet Howell. His research paper on the competitive rowing program of the German Democratic Republic became the seed that eventually grew into his current book project.

In 1989, Mallory's Optimal Force Application in Rowing, the Analysis of Force Graphs and Force Graph Biofeedback was presented and published at the 18th FISA Coaches' Conference.

As well as coaching, he spent 25 years working as a CPA. He retired from accounting to work full-time on The Sport of Rowing and is now serving as a consultant for several rowing programs around the country in addition to his work as an author.

His first book was a humorous memoir called An Out-of-Boat Experience . . . or God is a Rower, and He Rows Like Me!, and it is now in its second printing. Signed copies are available through www.row2k.com, and he donates 100% of the proceeds to support the row2k website.

He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Friends of Rowing History.

His wife of nine years, Susan, rowed for ZLAC as a senior in high school during the 1970s. Today she serves as President of Southern California and Nevada for Northern Trust. The Mallorys live in Los Angeles, though they maintain close ties to the San Diego area. They are both stewards of the San Diego Crew Classic.

Peter's stepdaughter, Emily Ten Eyck, rowed for ZLAC and for Northeastern University.

Peter's son, Philip, won a Southwest Regional Championship for San Diego Rowing Club as a junior and briefly coached at his alma mater, Boston University. A lieutenant jg in the U.S. Navy, Philip is now coaching in the Granby High School crew program in Norfolk, Virginia.

After several years spent researching his latest book, Peter has resumed training with the intention of someday perhaps rowing competitively again.