The Amateurs (25 page)

When the double had not rowed as well as Lewis expected in the first heat, he had become upset. Enquist tipped off Parker that Brad was brooding about coming in second; and Dave Grant, who had coached at Orange Coast College and knew Lewis well, and Parker tried to help him regain his confidence. The support for Brad, Grant said, had to be complete. "Harry," he added, "sometimes those who need love the most deserve it the least." Parker and Grant repeatedly told the two men how well they had done in the heat and how strongly they had come on in the second half of the race. The future, they emphasized, belonged to the two Americans.

Because Lewis and Enquist had taken second in the heat, they had to go to the repechage. For Lewis that was the truly terrifying race. He wanted above all else to make the final and to medal, but if they did not do well in the rep, that was it. Only two boats from their rep would make the final, and the rep was critical for some of the European doubles who, if they did not make the final, would lose their funding for the coming year. That meant the rep would be rowed all-out in a way usually reserved for a final. Lewis and Enquist decided to lead from start to finish. The Yugoslavs, their strongest competition, had the same idea. The Yugoslavs were a little ahead after the first five hundred meters, still ahead by a little at a thousand. At the fifteen-hundred mark the Americans took the lead and won by 2 seconds. They were in the final, and their confidence was growing.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-EIGHT

On the Sunday of the finals, Tiff Wood got up very early. This was race day, but he was not going to race. He was full of purpose and absolutely without purpose in that which meant the most to him. He had always planned to make the Olympic race his last one and then retire. Earlier in the week he had talked with Pat Walter, the Canadian spare who was also a world-class oarsman, about having a race among the spares. It would liven things up a little, and it might give him a greater sense of belonging. They talked of getting the West German spare to join them. Walter was amenable to the idea, but he told Wood the choice was his. In the end Wood decided that, since this was his last row, he did not want anything to disrupt his thoughts! This was a moment to have by himself. Walter sympathized, but in order to have some sense of excitement, they decided that Wood would go out exactly two minutes before Walter. That way they could clock each other and maintain some element of pressure.

It was an odd row. When Wood went out, the weather was clear and at the thousand-meter mark the fog came in so thick that he could not see. As he rowed the last thousand meters wrapped in fog, he thought of what might have been; and he told himself that the important thing was to deal with his disappointment as a man, to be graceful and generous. That was what rowing was all about. It demanded so much in preparation that even if he fell short of his goals, he was not diminished as a person. He told himself this, but he found it hard to take much comfort from his own words. He had been a member of three Olympic teams without rowing one stroke. When he finished the two thousand meters, he waited for Walter. Two minutes passed. There was no sign of Walter. The Canadian, hit even harder by the fog, came in about 30 seconds later. No race there. Then Wood went back and started taking apart the rigging of his boat. He did it just when he knew John Biglow was going to race. He was immensely fond of John, but he could not bear to watch him row in the singles. It was simply too painful.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-NINE

Biglow's rowing was proving an enigma both to himself and to his coaches. Harry Parker was convinced that Biglow's back was the source of his troubles. The power that a few years ago had been there and so readily available could no longer be summoned. It was a physical problem, but it showed up on no tests. Yet during the last few weeks of practice, Biglow, after doing his usual five-hundred-meter pieces, told Parker, "I just feel weak." Biglow found himself saying the same things during the Olympics. The difference seemed to be in his legs. He was not the same sculler he had been in 1981 and 1982. He was trying mightily and, in Parker's opinion, was being very brave. Things he had once done he no longer could do. Still Parker thought he had an excellent chance for the bronze.

After racing Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, John finally had some time in which to rest. His body was exhausted, and he hoped the others felt as tired. On Saturday, the night before the final, Harry Parker dropped by his room, in part to talk strategy, but in part, Biglow suspected, to let him know that Parker was with him. He realized that in the final Karppinen and Kolbe were beyond his reach. His two main competitors for the bronze were Ibarra of Argentina and Robert Mills of Canada. Biglow had beaten both of them on occasion and had lost to them on occasion. He was confident of beating Mills but more worried about Ibarra because Ibarra had beaten him in the semifinal. He had decided to key as much as he could on Ibarra. I will row my own race, he had vowed to himself. I can make only my own boat go fast. I cannot slow anyone else down. I will not think of the other boats nor let them disrupt me.

Rowing his own race meant he planned to be behind at the thousand-meter mark and then start charging. That was the style he was most comfortable with. But the others went out very quickly and he had, even within his own game plan, gotten a terrible start. At the five-hundred-meter mark he was much farther behind than he intended to be. He was sixth, and the only boat he could even see was that of the Greek, Konstantinos Kontomanolis, and he was behind that. By the thousand-meter-mark he had pulled slightly ahead of Kontomanolis. But the race was turning into a disaster.

Far ahead of him, a magnificent duel was beginning to take shape. Kolbe, in what was almost surely his last chance for a gold, had taken a considerable lead over the Finn. Karppinen was battling back, but this time Kolbe was not cracking. But that was another country. Farther back in the third five hundred, Biglow sighted Ibarra and Mills, who, to his surprise, was ahead of Ibarra. Biglow went after Ibarra and came through him in the third five hundred. That left Mills but Mills seemed too far ahead. Later he found out that the official time showed him 6.2 seconds behind Mills with five hundred meters to go, a huge difference. For a moment he thought of not even trying, but he knew he simply had to try, this was the last race of his life, and so he sprinted. He did not, as he sometimes did during a sprint, shorten his stroke. He simply tried to feed more power in. In the last three hundred meters, he seemed to fly; the boat was almost lifted out of the water, and he kept closing and closing on Mills. Ahead of him Karppinen was finally making his own surge, a powerful, determined challenge, not so much taking the beat up but feeding more power in; and Kolbe was trying to hold him off. The race might have been the greatest of Kolbe's life. For a moment it appeared Kolbe would hold the Finn off this time. Kolbe led by .86 second with 250 meters to go. But in the last hundred meters Karppinen, just on sheer muscle, passed him, winning by 1.95 seconds.

Biglow's surge came too late. If he had started 150 meters earlier, he might have succeeded. But Mills took third, 1.62 seconds ahead of him. That meant Biglow had cut 4.6 seconds off Mills with his closing drive. He finished fourth and missed the medal. The first thing he felt was relief that he did not have to race again, that he would never have to worry again about doing well. Then he worried briefly whether he could have rowed just a little harder, reached back for a little more. Some of his disappointment was short-lived, and some of it lasted long after the race was over. It was not just that he could not compete at the very highest level with Karppinen and Kolbe but that he had not improved in the three years since he had won his first world bronze. If anything, he might have slipped a little.

At the ceremonies, when he saw Robert Mills standing on the platform with Karppinen and Kolbe, getting the bronze, a wave of intense jealousy swept over him. Biglow was stunned by how much he wanted the recognition that Mills was receiving. Just then, Harry Parker came over to the dock. Biglow was surprised to see Parker there. He did not really know, he realized, how Parker felt about him. After all, Parker no longer had to feign any interest in him; there was nothing more that Biglow could do for Parker, no more medals he could bring him. Perhaps Parker liked him and believed in him more than he had realized. Harry Parker was smiling, which also surprised Biglow, and he was unusually gentle. He reached out and rubbed Biglow's hair.

"That was a tough one," he said.

"Harry, I think I raced as well as I could have," Biglow said.

"John, you were ready to race today," Parker said.

At that moment it was the nicest thing Biglow could hear. He felt miserable. He sat with a friend named Seth Bauer, a former Yale coxswain and now cox of the Olympic eight, and shook his head bitterly. "I can't believe it; I just
didn't
race," he said. "I can't believe it—I just let it slip away." He told Bauer he knew he wasn't moving quickly enough in the first part of the race, but he had been unable to do anything about it. After the race he went into the stands to visit with his family. Charley McIntyre, his old friend and coach, was there, and McIntyre had told him he had rowed well, very well, that he had flown down the course in the last five hundred. Praise from McIntyre was not easy to come by, and Biglow was pleased. Later, looking at the pictures of those moments, he was stunned by how happy he looked. His dream had ended, he had just taken fourth, he had missed a medal and yet the photos showed a relaxed, surprisingly happy young man. He was sure that what showed on his face was the relief that he did not have to row again, not so much the rowing itself, the practices, the workouts, but that he no longer had to live up to other people's hopes and expectations.

CHAPTER

THIRTY

Brad Lewis and Paul Enquist were getting on well, although they were not, as an outsider might have supposed, rooming together. They had decided that their temperaments were too different and that the possibilities of tensions far outweighed any presumed benefits. Lewis was rooming with Tiff Wood, Enquist with Biglow. After the semi, Lewis and Enquist studied the split sheet, which gave the times for each boat over the various increments of the race. They were clearly the fastest boat over the last thousand meters. Their problem was not to fall too far behind in the early part of the race.

They raced the final on Sunday. The Belgians went out early, at a very high cadence, and took a commanding lead. At a thousand meters they were two lengths ahead. In the boat Enquist, who was heavier, stroked so that the lighter Lewis could be in the bow. Lewis did all the talking. They had reduced their strategy to code words. "Quick hands," Lewis said, which meant get your hands away from your body as quickly as you can. That the Belgians were ahead did not bother him. At this point in days past, he would have panicked and changed his racing tactics. Instead he and Enquist rowed their race. "Nobody beats us," Lewis said as they rowed. At fifteen hundred meters the Belgians still had a length lead. "Zealand," Lewis said, a trigger word for New Zealand, which meant sit up a little higher in the boat and shorten up your stroke, as the New Zealand oarsmen did. For the first time Lewis could now see the Belgians in his peripheral vision. They were falling back. "We're getting them," he told Enquist. With about four hundred meters to go, he and Enquist took a power twenty. That pulled them even. "East Germans," Lewis said, which meant sit up even higher in your seat the way the East Germans do. It was a way of fighting sloppiness when they were both tired. But Lewis and Enquist felt fine now. Lewis knew they had the Belgians, knew their boat was going to win. He and Enquist stayed even for the next fifteen strokes. With twenty strokes left in the race, the American double pulled ahead. "We've got them," Lewis said. "Real nice, real pretty now." He did not want either of them to blow the race by overreaching when they already had it won. They won by 1.5 seconds. He and Enquist had medaled, a dream fulfilled. More than that, they had won the gold. That was beyond the dream. It was the ninth double race of Lewis's life. Brad Lewis is an Olympic gold-medal winner, he thought. The record books will always say that. Brad Lewis, Corona del Mar, California. All that work, all that work is really worth something. Everything he had wanted to happen had happened. All his weirdness would now be seen as genius. Harry Parker was there congratulating him and pounding him on the back. He had never seen Harry so happy.

He stood on the platform receiving the medal. Enquist, who always looked quiet and stoic, looked quiet and stoic. But Lewis, who never smiled, smiled and pumped his hands over his head like a victorious boxer. He took the flowers a young girl gave him and handed them to his sister and took the gold medal and handed it to his mother.

A few days later, Brad Lewis and Paul Enquist received a small package from Mike Livingston, who had been traveling with his family in Hawaii. It had been mailed before the finals. Inside was a small plastic shark. The note said, "Go for the gold. The great white shark strikes in the last thousand meters. Do not be denied."

CHAPTER

THIRTY-ONE

Joe Bouscaren was on duty that Sunday at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, where he was just beginning his internship. He had watched as much of the Olympics as he could, and he had been surprised by how moved he had been by them. They were not just a sporting event, the biggest regatta of all time, but something bigger, something part athletic, part spiritual, part theatrical. Their sheer size had mesmerized him, and suddenly he wanted desperately to be a part of them. Up until then he was sure that he had dealt well with his disappointment. He had looked back on his defeat as rationally as he could: He had done his best, he had prepared as well as he could and he had lost. He did not believe that Lewis and Enquist had won because they had harnessed and tuned what was superior strength. He believed that the critical moment for him and Altekruse was their flight to Lucerne to race in the international regatta there. They had peaked too early in their training, and Lucerne had cost them nearly two weeks in time on the water. He still believed that he and Altekruse had formed the best double that year. They had beaten Lewis and Enquist during the camp.