THE SPORT OF ROWING ning for years. The training is very hard, and they were able to do something in a race that a lot of people weren’t, which was to absolutely kill off the field in the first 700 meters. “I saw that, and that told me that per- haps this was something that could help us. “If you analyze women’s rowing over the past twenty years, pretty much every Gold Medal winner was ahead at the 700 meter mark. “Technically, Athens was the first Olympics where it didn’t happen because we were ahead there, even though we were ba- sically even.”8272 Lianne Nelson As the Athens Olympics approached and as Bryan Volpenhein was leading a revolu- tion in rowing technique on the men’s team,8273 a similar revolution was occurring among the women. Terhaar: “In 2004, it was a conscious decision on my part to go from really trying very hard to teach acceleration, something that my athletes had never felt before, to allowing them to evolve themselves into their own comfortable area.8274 I was having everyone row in pairs, rowing with different athletes, and we started to see combinations that worked. “Lianne Nelson was the fastest pair rower, almost no matter what I did, and as the year progressed, it was clear that she was getting tougher and tougher and fitter and fitter, and the athletes could sense it, too, and that was a big part of it. “Lianne accelerates and swings with her body. I knew that she had experience strok- ing, and I made the decision to put her in stroke, so instead of trying to teach these big 8272 Terhaar, op. cit. 8273 See Chapter 156. 8274 This resembles the strategy of American men’s coach Mike Teti. See Chapter 156. horses behind her how to do it perfectly, you know, saying something like ‘This is the rhythm! Just do it!’ and taking their natural instincts out, instead I could say, ‘Okay, fol- low Lianne, let yourselves use your bodies a little bit more, and go to town!’ “Lianne’s example made my job much easier. It let her teammates evolve naturally and let them row the way that suited their personality. I just encouraged them to use a little bit more body, let them swing. “Once the 2004 boat was selected, and this was how Lianne rowed, so this was how the rest of us were going to row, as soon as that happened, the boat clicked.”8275 The result was Silver in Athens, the first Olympic women’s eights medal of any color for America in twenty years. Anna Mickelson, 5-seat in Athens: “One of the first things that Tom needed to do when he selected the boat was find a stroke. That was key. We had to build eve- rything around her, and Lianne’s rhythm and the length of her stroke was the main differ- ence between 2004 and the earlier eights. “We always had these really strong women with hearts of steel who would go anywhere, but the stroke was short and choppy, partly because everyone learns to attack because that’s the way that we row in America. [my emphasis] “Lianne made us longer. “She also knows how to race. She knows how to pace herself, how to move on another crew, how to break a boat, all those things. Those are definite mental ad- vantages. It’s not that she’s trying harder. She’s just smarter. “I think the biggest thing Lianne brought to our team was experience. She’d been to the Games before. She knew what she wanted, and she knew how to get there. “Rowing with her was comforting. As a stroke, she was a commander, and we knew 8275 Terhaar, op. cit. 2318
