THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT “In 1991, I came back and made the eight. Kris had hired Igor Grinko5807 that year to coach the sculling, and Kris kind of changed his stripes and adopted a whole new kind of ‘throw the boat’ technique from the powerful Russian guys who could throw weights around the room like nobody’s business. They had this technique where there was just one shot through. Korzo’s technique had been more of a ‘Legs! . . Swing!’ a two-part process for a one-part drive. Now it was drive the blade in the water as hard as you can. It’s okay to miss the first foot of water. Just get that blade moving fast. “But when you drive it in and you hit the pocket of water, it’s like hitting a brick wall. If we were able to dead lift sixteen hundred pounds, which these Russian guys could do, maybe it could work, but because we didn’t have the weight training behind the technique, we went real fast for about 1,650 meters, and then the wheels fell off. “We finished eighth that year in the men’s eights. “In ‘92, Kris kind of came back to neutral, back to what he knew as a coaching style. I thought we had a fast crew. In my opinion, we changed the rigging the day of the final in Barcelona, and we went from a medal-winning crew to fourth place. There was a headwind that morning, so we chose really light rigging, and then the wind just died and we were spinning our wheels down the course. “I’m not taking away from the Canadian victory. They rowed a great race. It’s just that personally I thought we were a faster crew than fourth.”5808 As medals started eluding U.S. Camp boats, the USRA eventually decided that the team needed a new direction. 5807 See Chapter 79. 5808 Klepacki, personal conversation, 2008 Jordan: “Kris left after ‘92. In ‘93, he worked for the Chinese, and they immediately won the women’s quads and coxless-fours, the first Chinese Gold Medals ever at the World Championships.”5809 The achievement of the 1993 Chinese Coxless-Quad, following page, was especially noteworthy. From the introduction of the event in 1985 until 2002, every single World and Olympic Championship had been won by GDR and later its successor, the reunified Germany, under just one coach, Jutta Lau.5810 The sole exception was that Chinese victory in 1993 under Kris! With three members of the ‘93 crew still aboard after Kris left, the Chinese won Silver in 1994, but with the exception of another Silver in the doubles in 1999, no other Chinese heavyweight women’s boat medaled for another thirteen years. Jordan: “After 1993, the Chinese said, ‘Thank you very much. We can do this on our own,’ and so the Dutch hired Kris for ‘94. “He was in Netherlands through 2000, first as the women’s head coach and then as the men’s head coach and women’s sculling coach.”5811 In his first year, the Dutch women won the 1994 World Championship in the coxless-fours, Kris’s second consecutive win in that event. Ironically, the crew that finished second to China in 1993 and to Netherlands in 1994 was the United States of America,5812 Kris’s former employers. Return to the U.S. “Kris Korzeniowski rejoined the USRowing staff in January of 2001 as a 5809 Jordan, op. cit. 5810 See Chapter 119. 5811 Jordan, op. cit. 5812 See Chapter 153. 1615
