THE SPORT OF ROWING crying and breaking down, and there were injuries.”8057 Kakela: “I think Hartmut kind of used me as a barometer to measure how training was going because I was one of the smaller athletes. He would ask me periodically how I was doing, and he’d watch my weight and stuff like that. “I remember him asking me how I felt after one of our practice rows before we started racing, and I looked at him and said, ‘Hartmut, I feel kind of tired,’ and he said, ‘Well lady, there’s nothing to be done now,’ and I said, ‘No, I know. It’s time to race!’ The Race In the Olympic final on Lake Lanier, from the very first stroke the U.S. was never a contender for Gold. Romania inched away from the field in the first 500 and broke it open in the second. During the first 1,000, the Americans seemed to struggle mightily just to stay within a quarter-length of Belarus and level with Canada. Daniel Topolski: “There’s a lot of effort Ted Nash Collection “I do feel we were much punchier, not as swinging, letting the boat run, kind of muscling it along a little bit. I think it’s a combination of the technical, trying to go harder, and the mental stress. “It’s like, ‘Oh, we have to rise to that next level.’”8056 Olympic spare Lianne Nelson: “There was a lot of emotional fatigue. The kinds of workouts that we were doing getting ready for Atlanta were just crazy, and people were going into that American crew, but it’s a lot of it displaced as well. They’re throwing their bodies around, technically, throwing a lot of water up, bladework not very good. They seem to have lost a little bit of their focus in this last week when they got beaten early on in this regatta in the heats.”8058 The margins stayed the same during the third 500, Romania open water ahead of Belarus with Canada and the U.S. a tantalizing deck further back. Australia and the Netherlands trailed badly. In the final sprint, Romania and Belarus remained one length apart while Canada shot forward to grab Silver. The United States lost three more seats on Belarus to miss a medal by a full half length. 8056 Kakela, op. cit. 8057 Nelson, op. cit. 8058 FISA 1996 Video commentary 2250