THE SPORT OF ROWING draw out the whole stroke, and then we actually ended up racing him! “It’s funny because he doesn’t look like he’s pulling that hard . . . because he’s pulling connected! “I think that was the thing that I learned more than anything else during the 2000 cycle, being connected through the stroke, fully leveraging your body and your legs, off your back, up your arms, through the stroke, not wasting energy and being relaxed. “The ability to be truly connected is something that is very hard to do, and that takes time to develop. That was one of the things that I think we got right. We were able to fully leverage ourselves through the stroke and not waste energy.”6951 Pescatore: “That’s what I taught. A very fluid motion with a lot of feet out. It was all about getting connected early and keeping pressure on all the way through. “I coached those guys in the pair just like Korzeniowski coached me. Just lots of circles. Around and around on Lake Carnegie after regular practice, looking for continuous connection to the end of the stroke. “We’d talk. We’d look at video. We’d look at video of the Australians, changing constantly, trying to find things that the guys could be motivated behind to create more rhythm, flow, any last little thing. “I have no ego about coaching and rowing. I just want the boat I’m in to go fast or the boat I’m coaching to go fast. Kris was coaching the Dutch in 2000, and I was with him every day in Sydney when I was coaching those guys. “‘Kris, what do you think? We’re doing this, feet out, quarter slide. What do you think?’ Before Sydney Pescatore: “We went to the Olympic qualifier in Munich, and they were second behind these two Yugoslavian guys [Višacki and Stojic], one of whom was a former Cal oarsman who had rowed with Sebastian in college, and so at the Olympics they had to defeat them as well as a few other people in order to get their medal.”6952 Bea: “The preparation for Sydney was tough. I was still pretty young, remember, and I had not been rowing for that long, and I was pretty imbalanced. That led me to have some irritation in my back, and I was only rowing half the time in the three months leading up to the Olympics because my back was so temperamental.”6953 Pescatore: “Sebastian’s back went out twice, first before the qualifier, then he healed up and we qualified, and then it happened again. “I was worried about Seb’s back recovery, but Mike Teti counseled me to have patience because he was convinced that if Seb recovered, we could get a very competitive race out of them. “We went to Sydney with Seb lying on the floor of the plane, but we decided that he’d recovered once, so maybe he could do it again. “But the spare was already in the boat at that time. “He got another cortisone shot and took a few more days off when we got to Sydney. We were in Australia for a week, maybe even ten days before he even took a stroke, and then we slowly worked him back in. He wasn’t back up to full speed, if ever, at least until the middle of the racing.”6954 Bea: “I was not at full speed at the Olympics. Even though we did well, that’s the thing that’s incredible, because I think 6951 Ibid. 6952 Pescatore, op. cit. 6953 Bea, op. cit. 6954 Pescatore, op. cit. 1938
