THE SPORT OF ROWING Wight: “If during the race they had ever told us the stroke we were rowing, I would have fallen right out of the boat with surprise if nothing else.”2685 Was Becklean being less than truthful? Becklean: “I didn’t carry a watch! “I don’t think we ever talked about a race plan where we planned to row at 35 or 36 strokes a minute. I don’t remember that ever being explicit. “I don’t think if we had had a race plan to row it at 35, 36 going into that final, we would ever have done it. I think people would have been intimidated by that whole idea, so I think we just went out and did what we had to do. “That was Jim Rathschmidt’s approach to rowing, which was you took your start and settled for 20 and looked around and then did what you had to do. We were a tough crew. A very tough crew.”2686 Morey: “Well, Becklean didn’t have a watch, but we both knew that we were rowing at a higher rate than we had ever rowed before in a sprint race. Still, Bill never told anybody in the boat. He just told them that we settled at 33-34 and that everything was fine when we were actually at 35-36.”2687 Essy: “More power-10s, and then Bill said, ‘You’ve got a man on them! You’re going to win it!’ “These words were too delicious to believe, but we hadn’t yet reached the halfway mark. More power-10s, and we slowly seemed to eke out about a canvas ahead.”2688 Morey: “I wasn’t doggin’ it, but I wasn’t maxing out either, and we were just about even with them at the halfway mark. We took it up from there and started to pull away.”2689 Essy : “At the 1,000, I realized I felt like I should have felt at the 2,000. The emotional pre-race pressure had taken its toll, but something more was really wrong. Were we rowing higher than we were used to? “Now I was one of the strong ones. I wasn’t about to quit, but the lactic acid was really building. “Then Becklean called, ‘I need a 10 for Jim!’ and nobody could deny him. It was for our coach! “Well, Bill liked what he got, so of course next he said, ‘I need a 20 for Jim!’ . . . and that’s how he won us the race.”2690 Becklean: “I was asking for everything I could get.”2691 Essy: “Later, as I looked at Rusty’s head, I could see it begin to weave a little with fatigue, and I recall thinking, ‘Hang on, Rusty!’ “Anyway, my legs were like crowbars now, and I had to fight to get to full reach on the recovery, let alone drive. “The last 500 meters are a blank, and always will be, I guess. I remember the sunlight and hearing the Australian oars off to our left and behind us a bit. “I remember concentrating on just trying to swing it on and gutting it occasionally with what I felt I had left. “I pushed my left hand to the farthest edge of the oar, just to get it through better. The crowd roaring was like nothing I’ve ever heard, and then we took our final sprint up to 40 – and I’d have sooner died than quit, but the pain was God-awful. “I was aware somehow of Canada closing ahead of the Aussies.”2692 2685 Ibid. 2686 Becklean, op. cit. 2687 Morey, op. cit. 2688 Esselstyn, personal conversation, 2005 2689 Morey, op. cit. 2690 Esselstyn, op. cit. 2691 Becklean, op. cit. 2692 Esselstyn, op. cit. 736
