The Amateurs (24 page)

The hardest part of the camp for Harry Parker had been in trying to find a place for Tiff Wood. From the moment that Tiff did not win the singles trial, Parker had a special dilemma: a favorite and special oarsman who to his mind did not easily fit into team boats. At Hanover he had hoped that Tiff would do well in the double. Wood had rowed well with Paul Enquist, and Parker and Allsopp had given serious consideration to the pair. In the end they had decided that the Bouscaren-Altekruse boat was better. Parker did not believe he had been negligent in dealing with Wood. If anything, one of the things that had slowed down the camp had been Parker's concern about a place for him. But Parker also admitted that he had not done as good a job in trying all the combinations as he might have and that some of Wood's (and the other rowers') complaints were more than legitimate. But one of the problems was that each of the top oarsmen thought the selection process should revolve around him. That made it a matter of perspective, for the job of a coach was not to take care of individual oarsmen, no matter how much in his heart he rooted for one of them, but to find the fastest boats possible.

Selecting boats was even more difficult for an Olympic team than for a college one. In college, a coach's decision was cushioned by the fact that an oarsman was part of the larger community of the school and had to accept what was best for that community. But on an Olympic team, each oarsman was out for himself. Denying Tiff Wood a boat was the hardest thing Parker had done in his entire career as a coach. He hated being a part of it. The sight of Wood at the Olympics, apart, all that talent wasted, was a very painful one for him.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FOUR

John Biglow was excited about being in the Olympic camp. He loved being surrounded by all these athletes who shared his sense of purpose and who had sacrificed years of their lives to be here. He loved talking to Romanian coach Victor Mociani, though in fact they could not talk at all, since Biglow did not speak Romanian and Mociani did not speak English. But Mociani seemed to like him, calling his name enthusiastically and trying hard, through a kind of instant sign language, to communicate some idea of friendship. In that moment it seemed as if all Romanian people could be friends with all Americans.

Biglow knew many of the other oarsmen in the camp from previous regattas. Pertti Karppinen was there, not so much aloof as apart, a man clearly troubled by his lack of languages. But he always shook hands and nodded his head to Biglow when they met. Peter-Michael Kolbe, to Biglow's surprise, was friendly to everyone this time, but Biglow was wary of Kolbe. He was being friendly to Americans now that he was in America, but when the races had been held in Germany, he had been distant and uncommunicative.

The schedule for the single scullers was brutal. The heats were on Tuesday; the reps, for those who did not win their heats, were on Wednesday; the semifinal was on Thursday; and the final was on Sunday. That might mean three days of back-to-back racing if he did not qualify for the semi in his first race. Nor was he likely to. He drew, in his heat, both Kolbe and Karppinen. Part of Biglow was slightly shaken by that, but a larger part was delighted because it gave him a chance to row against both of them without the pressure of it being a final.

He went out very quickly in the heat, which was unusual for him, but he gradually fell behind. Kolbe had taken the early lead; and then, in the last few hundred meters, Karppinen made a move. At that point ABC, covering the race, broke for a commercial, leaving the scullers suspended in midrace. The commercial was for McDonald's and featured a man who orders some twenty fish sandwiches for his friends. They also all have Cokes. Back on Casitas, Kolbe did not contest Karppinen. This would be Karppinen's race without a challenge. Biglow, falling farther and farther back, was struggling. Known for his powerful finishing sprints, he appeared tired at the end. Karppinen beat him by 10 seconds; Kolbe, easing himself in, by 3. (Someone had seen Kolbe watching the videotape afterward, and he had narrated the race carefully to friends. "Now, this is where I stop racing," Kolbe had said, pointing to a moment in the last few hundred meters. A young Dutch woman had asked him why he had stopped racing. "I don't have to beat Karppinen every time I race. Only once," he had answered.)

Biglow was disappointed with the way he had rowed: He was not even competitive with Karppinen and Kolbe. It was clear that what Biglow had feared from the start was true. The best he could hope for was a bronze. When an American journalist asked if he thought he could get a gold, he replied, "I expect to get a bronze, but I had hoped to do better."

The rep the next day was relatively easy. All he had to do was be among the top three finishers to make the semi. He wanted to win it, however, because Harry Parker had charted and projected the semis and he drew an easier semi if he won. He finished first handily, beating Gary Reid of New Zealand by 5 seconds, but he had not been able to coast through on three-quarter pressure. That had given him a place in the semifinal against Kolbe and Ricardo Ibarra of Argentina. Ibarra, who had won his heat, had had a day off; for Biglow, the semi was his third race in three days. Biglow knew that he was a good endurance athlete, that he did better as a regatta went on and as fatigue overtook the others. But that was only if everyone was subjected to the same amount of stress.

In the semi he felt tired. Kolbe and Ibarra shot out quickly and were gone from him in the early part of the race. At five-hundred meters he was sixth. The work was harder than it should have been. For the first time he began to worry about making the final. Slowly he passed some of the oarsmen. At fifteen hundred meters he was even with Bengt Nilsson of Sweden, whom he had expected to beat easily. Then Nilsson began to fade. The last part of the race simply seemed to last longer and take more energy than Biglow had planned. In the end he finished third, 2.5 seconds behind Kolbe, who was first, and behind Ibarra, who was second. Biglow was not pleased with himself, but he had made the final and he had two days to rest.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FIVE

Brad Lewis had been only momentarily exhilarated after winning in the challenge boat at Princeton. He and Paul Enquist were the American double. Lewis was still angry about what had happened in the camp, and he flew out to California immediately. He did not want to go to another camp in Hanover, a place he had come to hate. Even worse, it was run by Harry Parker, a coach who had bypassed him in the selection process. There was some talk that he would practice in California alone in a single and join up with Enquist only at the last minute in California. Enquist was upset; it was as if Lewis had undergone another personality change after the race, becoming unreachable again. Enquist, who headed for Hanover, kept talking to Lewis, who eventually agreed to come East to practice with Enquist and to allow Parker, among others, to oversee their training.

However aloof he may have been, Lewis was excited by the fact that he was going to compete in the Olympics. In 1976, as a young man just out of college, he had gone to Montreal, believing that this was probably the one chance he would have to see an Olympiad on the North American continent. He had gloried in watching the Olympic rowers. They seemed at once so near, for he had rowed in college, and yet, by their achievements, so distant. They were the best in the world. He did not have a lot of money, but Montreal was not expensive. He had bought a $3 standing-room ticket to watch the final of the single sculls, in which Karppinen had beaten Kolbe at the end. It had been a magnificent race in which Kolbe, the reigning world champion and a great sculler, had been beaten by Karppinen, who was then virtually unknown.

What Lewis remembered about the race was that Karppinen had never before beaten any of his principal opponents. Lewis and Enquist had not beaten any of the principal crews either; but they were good enough to beat all of them, and they were going to row as aggressively as possible. Lewis had looked carefully at videotapes of Lucerne and last year's world championships, checking out the stroke ratings at which each double had rowed and which crews were most likely to challenge them. He decided that Paul and he in 1983 had probably been as good as most of their European competitors; but because they simply had not realized it, they had not rowed with enough confidence.

Looking at the film of Lucerne, where in back-to-back races Altekruse and Bouscaren had taken fourth and fifth, he concluded that the Americans had rowed too conservatively. Since the East Germans, who had had the best double at Lucerne, would not row at Lake Casitas, the West Germans, the Canadians and the Yugoslavs were likely to be the principal competition. Lewis made up his mind that he and Enquist would fill the shoes of the East Germans. The men from that double were big and strong, as were Lewis and Enquist; and when they rowed, they concentrated not so much on the quickness of the rating but on a beat that allowed them maximum power. Like the East Germans, they would use a stroke in which the oar spent a briefer time in the water and a longer time on the recovery. That seemed to suit their size and their power better. There was no reason why Paul and he could not win; there was no double that was beyond their reach. He continued to work on Enquist's motivation, buying him a three-foot inflatable shark and lettering the words "Stay Hungry" on it.

Enquist and he were warriors now. They would not hobnob with other rowers from other countries. Warriors stayed apart and did not fraternize. If they were on the water at the same time as another double, even if it was a time when they were just paddling, they would pass the other boat. Right before the first trial, Lewis tried to think of something else warriors would do. If the West Germans were the enemy, the leading double to beat, a warrior would piss on the flagpole that carried their flag. He told Enquist he was going to do it.

"Try not to get arrested and put in jail," Enquist said. "It's a little late for me to learn to row with Tiff."

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SIX

Harry Parker was one of the coaches working with Lewis and Enquist during the Olympics, and he was aware of Lewis's resentment. That did not bother him. What bothered him was the knowledge that as a coach he had handled Brad Lewis poorly and had fallen into the game that Brad set for his coaches. That was the game of rejection, and it almost guaranteed that no coach could over a very long period succeed with Lewis and that he would have to be by himself. The only thing Lewis responded to, Parker decided belatedly, was complete support and constant reassurance, two things Parker had not given him. In the first place, it was alien for Parker to treat oarsmen that way, and in the second place, he had lacked time. In 1983, he believed, he had handled Lewis well, particularly on the days when, unlike most high-quality oarsmen, he simply had not wanted to work out. The one thing that had bothered Parker after the 1983 season was his sense that Brad had been satisfied just to make the finals in the World and had not tried hard enough at the end. A year later, Parker realized he had completely underestimated the real rage and passion within Lewis. But it had taken his own decisions at the camp to trigger that rage. He had done Lewis, however involuntarily, the great favor of casting him perfectly, as the avenger who had been wronged by the system.

But Lewis had been difficult to evaluate at the camp, performing well if the mood suited him and if he was paired with someone he liked, and not performing close to his possibilities if he was paired with someone he didn't like. Parker had paired him early on with Enquist and had expected that boat to do well. When it did not, Parker suspected that Lewis regarded Enquist, his partner from the past, as somehow beneath him. On another occasion he had been placed in a double with Charley Altekruse. From the start, Parker knew it was trouble. Lewis sat in the boat, head down, not looking up. He did not speak. They rowed two pieces, both of them poorly, and took a break. "I think we have an attitude problem in the boat," said Altekruse.

Parker decided that part of the problem with Brad was that on the basis of the singles trial he felt that he had proven himself superior to most of the scullers and that because of that superiority he did not need to perform anew each day. But this was an Olympic camp, and the competition was savage. Nothing was granted to past performances.

To Parker, Lewis had represented a coach's nightmare. Do you pick and project Brad on the basis of his best performances or on the basis of his more dilatory ones, on the days when he was ready to row or when he was not ready to row? Those were hard choices.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SEVEN

In
the first Olympic heat, Lewis and Enquist were competing against the West Germans and the Norwegians. The West Germans went out quickly and took a big lead. Lewis and Enquist had in their boat strokemeters that showed at what rate they were going; and they were not able to keep the stroke as high as they had wanted, at a thirty-four. At a thousand meters there was perhaps a length of open water between them and the West Germans. Lewis and Enquist began to take the stroke up, and they closed hard and fast, finishing only 1.5 seconds behind. Lewis was pleased with the finish but not with the race. Despite their vows, they still had not rowed aggressively enough. It had been one thing to decide in advance at what rate they would row and quite another thing to sustain it in the water. Lewis attributed their failing to inexperience. It was only the seventh time he and Enquist had raced as a double, while some of the European pairs had raced together a hundred times.