[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 5 (Wednesday, January 25, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Page S116]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CONCEPT2
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, like most Americans, I start off the year
with my new year's resolution to work harder at getting in shape. As
always, my first stop is the Concept2 rowing machine in the Senate gym.
I have used it for years, and always think of Vermont when I do.
The rowing machines are made in Vermont, and last fall the Burlington
Free Press had an excellent article about the company and its founders.
I ask that a copy of the article be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Free Press, Oct. 14, 2005]
What a Concept
(By Matt Crawford)
Morrisville.--Peter and Dick Dreissigacker will be on
Boston's Charles River next weekend, rowing their way toward
the finish line in the annual Head of the Charles regatta.
The Dreissigacker brothers are two members of an eight-man
team called the Motley Rowing Club--a team that captured
third place in its division during last year's race. If the
Motley team is beaten again, part of the blame can be placed
squarely on the broad shoulders of the Dreissigackers.
What Nike is to running, what Orvis is to fly-fishing, what
Burton is to snowboarding, Concept2 is to rowing. Concept2 is
a Morrisville-based company that employs 55 people, and it is
run and owned by Misters Peter and Dick Dreissigacker. The
company leads the world in producing oars used by crews and
sculling teams and controls a significant portion of the
global indoor rowing machine market, too. ``Their products
are found around the world,'' said Alex Machi, director of
rowing at Middlebury College. ``They easily dominate the oar
manufacturing business.''
How two Connecticut brothers maneuvered their
internationally successful company into the center of the
rowing universe from a small town in northern Vermont is a
remarkable tale, one that continues to evolve on rivers and
ponds and indoor gyms around the world . . .
``The challenge,'' said Peter, ``is trying to continue to
improve on what we've got.''
Dick Dreissigacker, now 58, was a member of the 1972 U.S.
Olympic Rowing Team and a Brown University product. He
drifted out to California to take a rowing coaching position
at Stanford, a school Peter, who's four years younger, was
attending.
Dick was looking for a ``secret weapon'' after the 1972
Olympics and began to explore ways to improve oars, which had
been crafted out of wood pretty much since humans started
rowing boats through water. ``There were quite a few
companies making composite boats,'' said Peter, ``but nobody
was making oars.''
By 1976, the Dreissigackers had built a prototype of a
composite oar and began making them in the back of a bread
truck. They looked at places around the country and decided
to buy an old barn in Morrisville, partly because they were
from the Northeast, and started producing oars. By the 1980
Olympics, composite oars--made of carbon fiber and epoxies
and glues--were standard, thanks to the work of the
Dreissigacker boys.
The company makes ``sweep'' oars, oars for sculling and
oars for a small niche of rowers who specialize in trans-
Atlantic crossings. Oars range in price from about $200 to
more than $400 each, and there are custom orders, blade and
shaft repairs and stylized custom painting jobs that keep the
company's employees busy. Dick says there are two other
companies that are viewed as competitors with the
Dreissigackers, but Concept2 controls about two-thirds of the
world's competitive oar market.
In 1991, the Dreissigackers struck again, changing the
shape of the oar blades to a bigger, ``hatchet'' style, a
change that exploded through the rowing scene. At the 1992
Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, said Peter, ``boats were on the
water, changing their blades to our style.'' There was some
discussion of banning the bigger blade, which was more
efficient and more effective, but the style quickly became
the sport's standard. Two Middlebury teams and a University
of Vermont women's team will be using Concept2 oars when they
compete at the Head of the Charles next weekend. ``If 75 or
80 percent of the teams at the Head of the Charles are using
our oars,'' said Dick, ``then almost 100 percent of those
teams will have trained on our indoor trainers. They're
pretty much the standard.''
The Dreissigackers started making the indoor machines in
the mid-1980s, the first versions little more than bike
wheels and chains. Now the machines--their fourth version--
come equipped with computers to monitor an athlete's
performance and sell for $850. There are hundreds of them in
the Morrisville factory, stacked up and awaiting the start of
the Christmas buying season.
The first indoor rowing machines were called rowing
ergometers, or ``Ergs,'' for short, and the Dreissigackers
even developed a formula that allows the machines to measure
rowing ability--a number that the rowing world now refers to
as ``Erg scores.'' ``It's kind of like an athletic SAT
score,'' said Dick, who attributes Peter's higher Erg score
to the fact that he's four years younger, even though Dick
rows almost every day of the summer on a lake at his cottage
in Albany. There's a gym for Concept2 employees at the
company's headquarters, and yes, it is filled with rowing
machines. No longer in the barn, the company moved in 1984 to
a more industrial location, not far from the center of
Morrisville. The factory today is more than 45,000 square
feet.
Sarah Tousignant, a senior at the University of Vermont and
president of the school's women's rowing team, knows how
important Concept2's Erg machines are. The Catamounts train
six days a week on the Lamoille River using Dreissigacker
oars. They'll soon move inside for the winter and shift onto
Ergs. ``We just ordered 12 new Ergs from them,'' she said.
Most of the Head of the Charles athletes will be using
Dreissigacker oars, and nearly all will have trained and
honed their skills on Dreissigacker indoor machines. So even
if the Motley crew team gets beaten to the finish line on the
Charles River next weekend, the Dreissigackers still win.
With the Boston Red Sox out of baseball's playoffs, the eyes
of the sporting world turn to Boston this month for one
thing: The Head of the Charles Regatta.
A stretch? Consider that more than 7,000 athletes from
around the globe will compete in 24 race events in the 41st
annual Head of the Charles on Oct. 22-23. It is the world's
largest two-day rowing event. Rowing teams from the
University of Vermont and Middlebury College will be among
the competitors, as will brothers Dick and Pete Dreissigacker
from Morrisville.
The Dreissigackers, both former Olympics rowers, have been
competing in the Head of the Charles since 1978. In a way,
they'll be in the majority of boats on the river, given that
most of the competitors will be using oars made by the
Dreissigackers' Concept2 company. ``It's pretty much the most
prestigious fall race,'' said Sarah Tousignant, women's team
president of UVM rowing. ``It's the race that everybody looks
forward to and holds in high regard.'' The Head of the
Charles was first held Oct. 16, 1965. As many as 300,000
spectators are expected to be on hand for the weekend.
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