THE SPORT OF ROWING “We were all well aware that Lianne was good at moving small boats, and I had wonderful rows with Lianne in straight- fours as far back as ‘94. Yes, we worked on greater swing [in 2004] . . . towards the end, but I think that with Lianne stroking the boat, that’s kind of what she does, so we pretty much had to do what she did. “I think that Lianne has been rowing like that since day one. I have never been able to row in that manner. It’s a body type thing, I think, more than anything else. I know she used a longer layback, but it’s not like I took a stand and said I was going to lay back just so far, and that was it. That’s just what my body does, so that’s how I row. “I definitely front-half it. I graduated from Cal back in John Squadroni’s day. I guess it’s a mixture of being taught that ap- proach, rowing with people that were shorter than me, and my personality. I want to pull, and I like to pull as soon as possible.”8277 To an extent, Korholz’s place in the 2004 boat was analogous to Carie Graves’ place in the 1984 Eight. Both women were by far the tallest, strongest, most imposing athletes on their crew. Both were of the previous generation of athletes, members of the Olympic Eight of eight years earlier. Both women were segmented-force Kern- schlag rowers in a Schubschlag boat. Nei- ther swung to the finish with her teammates. Both were nevertheless the best candidates for their seat. Lianne Nelson: “Regardless of tech- nique, Laurel deserved to be in that boat. She was amazingly strong!”8278 Nelson’s Technique Lianne Nelson is a product of the Seattle junior sculling community, coached by 8277 Korholz, personal conversation, 2006 8278 Nelson, personal conversation, 2005 Olympic Champion Paul Enquist8279 and representing both Lakeside School and Green Lake Crew. She learned to really swing her body and accelerate the boat during her freshman year at Princeton. Dan Roock, then Princeton women’s coach, later Cornell men’s coach, remembers: “Lori Dauphiny, the novice coach at the time, is in my opinion one of the finest coaches of drive connection in the business. “Lori’s expertise is in using simple lan- guage to get great connection between the legs and body, and a continuous acceleration to the release, with what often looks like excessive layback, but with what is actually a natural, continuous total body drive. Her boats have little check and remarkably little bounce in the bow.”8280 Lori is now Head Women’s Coach at Princeton. In 2004, after Lianne had established herself at the top of the National Team pair matrix and had been selected to stroke the Eight, Tom began to “encourage” the boat to adjust to her rhythm. Anna Mickelson: “During the whole four years that I have been in the eight, Tom always had something that we were focusing on. It was a progression, and the very, very last thing that we added in was the body swing. Definitely in the last year, once we had learned to connect with our legs at the right time, we just learned to feel it more instead of it going in sequence of legs first, then this, then this. “Tom really started having us lay back more when we were training in Italy be- tween the two World Cups. He wanted to be sure that people were picking the boat up before we added the body. We did a lot of drills while we were in Italy to kind of con- 8279 See Chapter 139 ff. 8280 Rook, personal correspondence, 2005 2320
