THE SPORT OF ROWING of time for the recovery, so massive acceler- ation to give us more time. “When Bryan Volpenhein rows, he searches for that. When he’s racing, even off the start, he’s searching for his pace and his rhythm. “I think that, like Harry Parker says, the most difficult thing to teach is feeling. Bry- an has tremendous feel, and he knows what he wants, and if you watch the Olympic fi- nal in 2004, that’s basically what he was doing.”8144 The Ballad of Bryan and J.R. After winning World Championships in the eight in 1997, 1998 and 1999, the fifth place U.S. showing in Sydney in 2000 came as a devastating blow to the athletes,8145 and no one took it more seriously than Brian Volpenhein, bow-seat since 1998. When the team came back from Australia, he left the National Team training center in Prince- ton and returned to Columbus, Ohio to com- plete his studies at Ohio State University. Jason Read had been a peripheral member of the National Team in 2000 and a friend of Bryan’s. Since he was fifteen years old, he had also been a member of his hometown Amwell Valley EMS and Rescue Squad in Ringoes, New Jersey, north of Princeton. J.R.: “When the Olympic Team left for Sydney, I was disappointed that they only took one port spare and left me home. When the guys did so poorly, it was very upsetting for all of us back in the States to watch because we weren’t there helping the team in any way. “I remember viewing the Opening Cer- emonies in my buddy’s dorm room on the Princeton campus and saying to myself, ‘I’m never going to watch this again from home. This is not going to happen for Athens.’ 8144 Teti, op. cit. 8145 See Chapter 154. “I was working hard to finish two de- grees at Temple University in Philadelphia, and that fall was my second to last semester. I was also training extremely hard. “One day I thought to myself, ‘You know what? You should take the spring off and really focus on trying to stroke the eight for the 2001 World Championships in Lu- cerne.’ “Just then, Mike Teti walked up and asked, ‘So what’s your schedule this spring? Can you go out to Columbus and row with Bryan? We’re getting him back into the sport.’ “I thought to myself, ‘Hey, Bryan’s a great guy. He’s a good friend of mine.’ We had rowed in pre-elite camps together, and it had always gone well whenever we were the stern-pair or the bow-pair together. “So I said, ‘Okay.’ Columbus, Ohio Read: “So I was sent out on Mission Volp to Ohio State University. This laissez- faire approach from Mike was him growing as a coach because that had not been his usual mantra. “Then after it sank in, I started thinking to myself, ‘Wait a minute. You’re leaving Princeton, New Jersey where you have lots of friends, the Rescue Squad, the Fire Com- pany and a rather intense social and academ- ic schedule at the university? “‘Have you lost your mind?’ “So I went out to Columbus not particu- larly excited. “It was March. Bryan had a couple of Concept2 smoothy blades with composite handles and a beat-up 1990 Hudson pair we could row. Everything was wood in it, but we made it work. “Early on when we rowed, we would go out, we’d look around, we’d yell at other boats we practiced with. We were having fun, but we were total buffoons out there. 2284