Boys in the Boat

Sipping a tall glass of Czech Republic pilsner in a Prague cafe the other evening, I began to notice how extraordinarily smooth the glass felt in my hand. I turned it around and examined it more closely, when suddenly it dawned on me: It wasn’t the glass that was smooth — it was my hand. Setting the beer aside, I held up both of my palms for inspection. Yes, it was true. Nearly all of my rowing calluses had vanished.

Traveling inland through Europe the past 10 days, I’d been off the water all that time and now retained hardly any evidence whatsoever of having rowed in six races in the recent World Masters Games in Italy. Or having rowed almost daily in the early summer (in preparation for the Games) on my hometown lake in Alaska. Or for that matter training all winter long on indoor rowing machines with my Anchorage crew mates.

Had my memory of the Games vanished as well?

I sat there and tried to recall my races, one by one. There was my single-scull heat on Day 1 (in close to 100-degree heat). Rowing on a straight-arrow 1,000-meter course, I came in fifth out of seven, beating out a portly Australian and a dead-last Italian — but failing to keep pace with the top three scullers from Russia, Poland and Germany, a kind of Eastern Bloc sweep.

To tell the truth, I didn’t so much mind losing my heat to three clearly superior, more experienced scullers. I felt afterward that I’d rowed hard and well and that’s what mattered to me most. Afterward I saw that my time was actually about 30 seconds faster than it was in the last World Masters Games four years earlier in Sydney. And now, I told myself, if I could just shave off a mere half-minute more in the next four years, I might stand a chance to medal in Auckland. (Such is the not-necessarily rational post-race optimism of rowers.)

Three other male teammates rowed in singles heats as well, each in younger (and faster) age divisions than mine. All three rowed well, but suffered a variety of hard-luck stories. Two of our best scullers (Scott Coon and Dan Brokaw) had the misfortune of being placed in the fastest heats and failed to advance by a hair. Mike Chriss actually won his heat — but then got administered out of rowing in the final by a spider’s web of Italian organizational scheduling conflicts with two other races he was rowing.

For the men, our collective luck didn’t get any better on Day 2, when our sweep-oared men’s eight failed to advance to the finals, finishing a disappointing fifth. There was really no excuse we could point to. We’d rowed hard and were driven hard by our coxswain Natasha Graham. We simply got beat by better crews. Which isn’t all that surprising, considering how much the Games have grown.

A word about that. Something like 18,000 athletes competed in Torino this month in 30 different sports (far more than competed in the last Olympics). In rowing alone there were 1,200 competitors. Our small happy band from Alaska numbered about two dozen women and one dozen men. We were told we made up the largest contingent of rowers from any single state in America. But at the same time we were totally eclipsed by an estimated 700 rowers from Australia.

A day before the Games were to begin, one of them told me that about half of the Australian rowers were there just for the experience and the fun of visiting Europe. “That’s me,” she said. “The other half, though — they’re serious. They want to medal. They’ve been training the last month in camps…”

Those fairly daunting odds of 20 Australians for each Alaskan prevailed in all the other men’s races as well, as our boats either failed to advance to the finals or failed to medal if they did. All of which makes the accomplishment of the Alaskan women (see previous post, “Those Alaskan girls”) — medaling in seven races — all that more extraordinary.

On the last day of competition, the guys got to join together with the women in all the “mixed boat” events, and Sue Sheard and I teamed up in a double. But it was touch and go on whether we would even make it to the starting line. First our coach, Kern McGinley, had to plead with Italian race officials to allow us to launch (due to another scheduling conflict, the race was about to start). Then we had to quickly row 1,000 meters from the finish to the start — where everyone else was waiting — execute the equivalent of a swimmer’s lap turn, slip into our lane and start the race virtually without pause. We rowed well, I thought, but finished fourth. And only the winner advanced.

So the last day of the Games was just about to end without any Alaskan male winning a medal. But then Homer rower Jim Hurd took full advantage of his own mixed-boat opportunity by teaming up with his medal-winning wife, Karen, to capture the bronze in their senior doubles race. And on behalf of all the guys, may I say: “Thank you, Jim!”

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