THE ERA OF POLARIZATION Spracklen: “Fred Honebein, Jamie Koven and Don Smith were top athletes, but there was little to choose between the rest. Trials for the eight were held in pairs, backed up with fours. The pairs confirmed individual ability, and the fours confirmed ability to work as a team. The pairs were trialed first and put into fours in the order they finished. The fours were then trialed, and as predicted they finished in the same order as the pairs, which confirmed that the trial had been fair and accurate.”7834 Klepacki: “Mike announced that the four fastest pairs from the pair competition would be considered for the eight. That was Spracklen’s theory. If you could move a small boat well where you were 50% of the outcome, you should be able to take the four fastest pairs, and the application should transfer to the eight. “Sean and I finished fifth in the pair trials by something like .02 seconds, so we were like just on the fringe, certainly in kind of a gray area, but Mike finally made the decision to put the top four pairs in the eight. “If you have a pair that’s four seconds ahead of the rest of your training group, I can understand that. Those guys are probably putting forth a skill set that the rest of the group has not achieved. You may want to model that, and those guys should probably be in the eight, but when you get down to the pairs three, four, five and six, and they are within say three tenths of a second of each other, it seems to me that there has to be room for interpretation, and you don’t just go with a hard and fast rule of picking the top four pairs . . . but I’m not the coach.”7835 Sean Hall: “Jeff and I did finish fifth in the pairs, only a fraction of a second behind fourth. However, Jon Brown finished something like eighth, while Chris Swan 7834 Spracklen, op. cit. 7835 Klepacki, op. cit. finished either third or fourth with his partner, Doug Burden. “In essence, there was a bend in the hard rule of the top four pairs going into the eight. J.B. was plucked out of his pair and put in the eight, while Chris wasn’t even given a look. “Ninety-six was my best year training, but my worst in rowing. I did everything I could, but the decision of where to put me was entirely Mike’s. Live by the sword, die by the sword – I did, in fact, sign up for that. “The short of it is that 1996 left a wound deep enough that after the Olympics I dropped out of rowing while at the top of my ability.”7836 Spracklen: “The eight was formed on the basis of the trial in pairs but there was no obvious choice for stroke. Oarsmen from within the crew were tried and a decision was made in favour of Fred Honebein at stroke with Jamie Koven at seven as the two best oarsmen to lead the crew. “Jeff Klepacki had stroked the crew well in 1994 and 1995 and would have done a good job. He had a nice personality and was an asset to the team, as was Sean Hall who had rowed in the successful eight of 1994. They both brought good atmosphere to the team, and I was fond of them, but there can be no sentiments when selection is involved, and to have ignored the trial would have opened the flood gates for law suits, not uncommon in USA, and an affliction I escaped in my four years in USRowing.”7837 Klepacki: “The one lineup change that Mike did make leading up to Atlanta was to put his fastest port-side pair-rower, who was Fred Honebein, and Fred’s pair-partner, Don Smith, into the stern-pair. This was the same chess-piece move that he had used in ‘92. That year in Canada he had moved 7836 Hall, op. cit. 7837 Spracklen, op. cit. 2183