THE ERA OF POLARIZATION Hartmut had his reasons and he knew what he was doing.”8076 Nelson: “Right before we left for Sydney, you could just tell the boat wasn’t moving. Hartmut had waited a really long time to announce the team. We had like one week from when we found out we were officially on the team until we left for Sydney, and I just don’t think that was enough time. It’s pretty well documented that you go into a big hole and then you have to come back up. “They told everyone, we packed our bags, did processing, got on the plane, and everyone got sick. We got to Sydney with strep throat running through the team. Everyone was so exhausted and so relieved to make the team that it was like, ‘Okay, we can relax,’ and then we were in a miserable environment, beautiful place but bad training environment in Yamba.8077 “And then self-doubt just came in, and technique went out. We weren’t having good rows, and you couldn’t feel the boat because we were on a river, and Hartmut started changing the boat. “‘Okay, let’s try oars, let’s try different hull, let’s do lineup changes.’ “I don’t think I can point to one particular thing that went wrong. It was a combination of things. We didn’t win in the heat, and I do think that each race was getting better, but if you look at the Olympic progression, everyone gets better.”8078 In Sydney as in Atlanta, the U.S. Eight looked to be working harder but not getting nearly as much out of each stroke as the other crews beside them. The boat started even with the competitive field but gradually lost ground from the first 250 meters. They 8076 Simpson, op. cit. 8077 600 km north of Sydney at the mouth of the Clarence River, not far from the boyhood home of Henry Searle. See Chapter 131. 8078 Nelson, op. cit. crossed the line in last place, ten seconds behind the winning Romanians. Simpson: “We had had an excellent year of training and domestic racing, and this was the best lineup that could be made from the available athletes, but this was a relatively inexperienced group, many of whom did not have a lot of racing experience. The first international experience for five members of the crew was as recent as 1997. “And two athletes were sick, one in particular to a degree to which could have altered the line-up.”8079 After the disappointments in Atlanta and Sydney, USRowing replaced Buschbacher with his former assistant, Tom Terhaar, as the new Olympic Quadrennial began. No athlete I spoke to blamed Hartmut for either Olympic letdown, 1996 or 2000. Fuller: “The problem is that it’s so dynamic. What works for one eight isn’t going to work for another eight. If you can come up with an answer in your book, Peter, well . . . “Unfortunately, there are a lot of ideas out there. “Hartmut showed us the ‘84 Olympic Eights race.8080 Kathy Keeler8081 came and spoke with us. We had a few of those women come and speak to the team in both ‘96 and 2000. “We had a sport psychologist in 2000, Jim Bowman from the Olympic Training Center. We met with him. We had these cards he made for us, these meetings, team building. This wasn’t an overlooked part of it. For whatever reason, it didn’t work. “We trained in a place in Australia that was so beautiful, but they were burning the sugar cane fields, so it was also as smoky as you could possibly imagine. Was that part 8079 Simpson, op. cit. 8080 See Chapter 148. 8081 Stroke of the 1984 Olympic Champion Eight. Ibid. 2257