THE SPORT OF ROWING Derek Porter, his best port man, into the stroke seat.7838 “I had several people make that connection to me. ‘Do you understand what he’s doing? He did the same thing four years ago, and it worked for him.’ “I don’t make this observation to take anything away from Fred as an athlete. He will always have my complete admiration. “It was a coaching decision. I think Mike was banking on the fact that putting his fastest port into stroke in ‘92 moved them from Silver to Gold, and he was hoping that doing the same thing in ‘96 would take them from Bronze to Gold.”7839 Honebein: “I was never a technical guy like Jeff. I was a power guy. That’s who I was. I could always get the blade in quick and get on it really quick. “People said that they could follow me really easily, but I was never the one that people would look at in the boat and say, ‘Wow! I want to look like that guy.’ “We tried virtually everybody who had made the eight at stroke. Jon Brown was put up there. We tried Jamie for a little while. I think we tried Doug Burden at one point. I obviously ended up in stroke, but it never had the same flow to it as ‘94 or ‘95. The power was there. We would always go for it, but just didn’t have that ‘easy speed’ that everybody talks about, and I think that’s the intangible that maybe Jeff would have brought, but unfortunately . . . “We started training really hard, and if you fell off the pace for a week, man, you just couldn’t recover. Chip McKibben came down with Epstein-Barr, and a few other guys got things, and the level that guys were striving towards was just incredible. That being said, I think that is telling about the boat. “We really tried to get the chemistry, but the thing about the ‘96 Eight that was 7838 See Chapter 134. 7839 Klepacki, op. cit. 7840 Honebein, op. cit. 7841 Spracklen, op. cit. different from the three eights leading up to the Olympics was a little bit of inconsistency in our training. There were days when we’d set records in anything that we did. The boat would take off like a shot. Then there were days when we couldn’t row out of our own way. That was a little bit frustrating.”7840 Spracklen: “I am aware that the best oarsmen do not always move pairs well and that there is a chemistry in an eight that blends a crew. Finding that blend in the 1996 U.S. Eight was a big challenge, and the inconsistency of the crew in training suggested that there was a missing link, but there were times the crew had remarkable speed, indicating that it was the best crew that could be produced at that time and that it could win in Atlanta. “The USA athletes had been watched closely in singles, pairs, fours, on the ergometer, in the gymnasium and other activities every session every day for three years. I had a good appraisal of where we stood in the buildup to selection for Atlanta. I was confident in their ability to row in a team boat.”7841 Honebein: “I think that what Spracklen was doing with selection was finding out who were the guys that came to play when the pressure was on because he knew that the pressure at the Olympics was going to be really hot and really heavy. “Everybody wants to be the stroke of the Olympic Eight, and at the time I was psyched. I was pumped! Mike thought I was the guy who was going to get us going again, and I wanted to be that guy! “Yeah, I knew that Mike had done the same thing in ‘92 with the Canadians. I think that what Mike was looking for was for me to bring that same attack to the eight 2184