THE SPORT OF ROWING “Every time we’d get within a deck, I’d say to Calvin, ‘Come on! We got ‘em! We got ‘em!”6017 The Oarsman: “Over the last 500 meters, the heavily favored Landvoigts protected their Gold by finishing 3.42 seconds over the USA. Cal and Mike had no trouble at all holding on to a very impressive Silver Medal, by 3.30 seconds over the Bronze Medal West Germans.”6018 Staines: “We got down to the last 500, and we had a great finish . . . but we didn’t sprint. That was Cal’s decision. We felt we weren’t going to break them, we weren’t going to get through, and he didn’t want to do something and lose the Silver. “We kept our same rating, our same pressure and just went across the line . . . which . . . who knows? Maybe we should have gone balls to the wall, but who knows?”6019 Coffey: “The grandstands along the Montréal course weren’t actually at the finish line. They were a bit further up the course. I remember you could hear the fans get louder and louder, and then they were beside you, and then the noise would recede and you still had ten strokes or so to go. “I have this kind of clock inside me, and I try to time my efforts so that I have given everything by the last stroke of the race, and I pushed really hard early in the last 500 as we approached the stands. I don’t like to look around in a race, but as the noise started to recede I was pretty much used up, and I looked around to see the Landvoigts still ahead of us. I also remember looking over to the West Germans and saying to myself, ‘Well, no way they are going to catch us,’ and that’s pretty much how we crossed the finish line. “Who knows what might have happened if we had cracked them earlier in the race, 6017 Staines, op. cit. 6018 The Oarsman, op. cit. 6019 Staines, op. cit. but the last twenty strokes or so ended up a bit of an anticlimax.”6020 The Oarsman: “A satisfied Coffey and Staines stood proudly to receive their Silver, but to me their faces reflected just a few misgivings over not being able to take the Gold. And therein may lie the reason for their wonderful success, in that they were consummate competitors, aggressive and experienced. “Ironically, they had defied conventional wisdom by not having been together as a crew for years, a fact noted with some ruefulness by some oarsmen who had been in crews together for a long time.”6021 Staines: “In fact, there wasn’t much of a sense of team at all in Montréal. It was very disappointing. After the race, I don’t think a single American congratulated us except maybe Allen Rosenberg, who said to me, ‘Nice job,’ as he walked by me in the hallway the next day.”6022 The Oarsman: “They obviously ‘clicked’ together, and perhaps that is even more important. They were simply not going to be denied in this regatta, and their achievement is truly magnificent.”6023 Coffey: “The East German stroke couldn’t get out of the boat by himself after the race. His brother had to help him. “In 1994, I was selling boat technology and hull molds to the guy who was then the head of the Russian federation, and he had talked to the Landvoigts’ coach. “The coach told him that the Landvoigts had been on steroids, as were the Russians at the time, and that at least one of them was having some later health problems as a result of their drug use. 6020 Coffey, op. cit. 6021 The Oarsman, op. cit. 6022 Staines, op. cit. 6023 The Oarsman, op. cit. 1688
