THE SPORT OF ROWING meager funding, but still Ted found a way to put together another fast coxless-four. Jeff Klepacki: “Kris Korzeniowski had coached the U.S. Team through ‘92. I had rowed 4-seat in the eight in Barcelona, but then I herniated two disks in my back, had surgery in November of ‘92, took six weeks off and got back into training in like January of ‘93. “I was feeling myself out, seeing what I could do after the injury, and still living in Princeton where the whole team had trained. There was a small group left over from the previous year, among them Sean Hall and Jim Neil, the stern-pair of the 1992 World Championship fourth-place Coxed-Four. “Mike Spracklen6555 came in and had a meeting with us, maybe in the early spring of ‘93, and he said, ‘I’m the new head coach. I’ve been hired to win an Olympic Gold Medal in the men’s eights.’ “As Mike went around the country to find the next generation of Olympic athletes, the guys who had raced the quadrennial before just kind of hung together in Princeton, and Jim Neal, Sean Hall and I started soliciting Tom Bohrer from the ‘92 Barcelona Olympic Silver Medal Coxless- Four to join us in a new four. “‘Hey Tom, you have a wealth of experience rowing this event. You own this event in the United States. You can show us the path. We’re three eager guys chompin’ at the bit here.’ “We catered to his schedule. He was working. He had a family. We would drive over from Princeton to Philly like three mornings a week, and there were days when we’d drive all the way down to the boathouse in rush hour traffic, and we’d get a phone call from Tom saying, ‘I can’t make it today.’ We were like ‘Okay, we’re here,’ and we’d go out in a single and a pair, and the three of us would do a weight circuit together. 6555 See Chapter 149. “We kept training and training and training, hoping that Tom would come around, and as soon as Tom saw the commitment that we were putting forth, he talked to his wife and straightened it out, and we got him on board, and it was like someone turned a switch. That four went from rowing 6:08 to rowing 5:55, 5:56. It was more than a ten second turnaround. “We got Ted Nash to coach us. Ted is one of the most caring guys. When you’re on Ted’s team, that’s the guy you want pulling for you. He will fight tooth and nail with officials, with other coaches, with boat makers, with other athletes to do what he thinks is best for his crew. “Maybe it was his military background, but man, did you feel like you had a guy who was in your corner when you were going into the twelfth round of a heavyweight fight. Almost obnoxiously so, where outsiders would say, ‘Can you believe this guy?’ but when you’re his guy, you felt like you had a partner on your side. Technique Klepacki: “Ted had a knack for the straight-four. I think in a slower boat like a four the application is a little bit different. In the eight, you can be super aggressive and just whale on it, while in the four and the pair you had to have an element of finesse. “I think that one thing that Ted really opened my eyes to was that Ted would emphasize length of stroke and time in the water. He always taught that you had to take as long a stroke as you could and get the blades through the water as fast as you possibly could. The length of stroke was something that really helped us move that boat along.”6556 6556 Klepacki, personal conversation, 2008 1814
