THE SPORT OF ROWING Lianne’s Secret What makes Lianne Nelson so in- teresting in the context of rowing technique is that throughout her Na- tional Team career she has had an un- competitive ergometer score. Lianne: “The difference between Bryan Volpenhein and me is that Bryan has the whole package. I don’t. Bry- an’s in a league of his own. He has the erg, he has the boat moving skills, and he has the head. I think that all three make up the rower. I think that I have two of them. I think I can move a boat, and I have the head, but I definitely don’t have the raw power that Bryan has. “Or my teammates have, for that matter.”8284 Lianne moves boats despite a poor erg score, so it is difficult to avoid concluding that her boat-moving ability comes largely from her Schubschlag Classical Technique. Nelson first represented the U.S. in 1994 after her junior year at Princeton. After stroking the FISA Champion Under-23 Women’s Coxless-Four, she and Mary McCagg were picked as the spare pair for the senior team. Not accepting their inferior status, they entered and won the Trials, beat- ing the designated National Team Pair, and then placed sixth in the Worlds in Indianap- olis.8285 In 1995, she rowed 3 in the World Champion Coxless-Four,8286 and in 1996, she ended up the spare for the eight, losing the competition for the last seat in the boat 8284 Nelson, op. cit. 8285 See Chapter 153. 8286 Ibid. FISA 2004 DVD Lianne Nelson (above, right) Divine inspiration? The Ecstasy of St. Theresa by Gianlorenzo Bernini Santa Maria della Vittoria Rome on the last day to Laurel Korholz through an ergometer test, Lianne’s Achilles’ heel. After the Olympics, she took a year off to get married. When she returned, she stroked the U.S. Eight to Silver in 1998, won the petit final in the pairs in 1999 and stroked the eight again to a disappointing sixth place at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. After her second Olympics, she took two years off, this time to have a child, and returned to place sixth in the pairs in 2003. Tom Terhaar: “The focus before the 2004 Olympic year was not to win the World Championships but to qualify all the boats for Athens, which, with the exception of one boat, we did, and that was a very happy outcome. “If Lianne had been in the eight at that point, probably the pair would not have qualified, so she helped the program tre- mendously.”8287 8287 Terhaar, op. cit. 2322
