[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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