THE SPORT OF ROWING lake, and we got slaughtered, absolutely slaughtered.”8176 Bryan: “We just got demolished by those guys, ten, fifteen seconds in 1,500 me- ters, and it was like instant. They had like lengths of open water in ten strokes. We were hitting buoys and just flopping all over the place.”8177 J.R.: “Teti really laid into us after we got off the water, and that night Bryan went out and got so intoxicated that he was vomit- ing the whole next day. We missed practice. “Now I come from a college program and a high school program at the Hun School where you don’t drink at all, and here I was in England with all their pomp and circumstance with a drunk club rower from a mediocre rowing college. Physiolog- ically and technically, he’s one of the best rowers in the history of our sport from our country and perhaps beyond, but I was look- ing for anything to say that might rein him in. “‘Hey, this isn’t the Dad Vails, Bry.’ “So he’s vomiting all over the place the Sunday before the Silver Goblets heat, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘What the heck am I doing?’”8178 Bryan: “What made our Henley experi- ence important was that I learned to be a little more fearless because we had to change our strategy in order to race Crack- nell and Pinsent again. “Based on our horrendous showing in our practice with them, we decided that we were going to attack at the beginning of the race a lot harder, and we were going to row a lot higher. “We rowed at 37½ all the way down the course, just sort of tapping it along and keeping it going, just staying in contact. The attitude was a big change for us, being able to say, ‘To hell with it. We’ve got 8176 Read, op. cit. 8177 Volpenhein, op. cit. 8178 Read, op. cit. nothing to lose. Let’s just relax and race.”8179 J.R.: “By 2003, we were getting better at not rushing into the front, and everything within the rhythm of the boat. We would be able to just go bananas and still keep the boat set, everything going with the boat, like at the Henley final when we sprinted the last 500 meters. “That was going to the well and beyond, and we were so close, from open water to a third of a length at the end and moving all the way! “We were looking out, doing everything you’re not supposed to do. Look at these two college idiots!”8180 Pete Cipollone: “I was on the finish line for that race. It was the most exciting expe- rience I had ever had!”8181 J.R.: “I thought I was going to soil my- self when I got off the water. I’m serious. I thought I was going to lose it because it was a longer race because we were in a pair, and it was a longer race because it was the Hen- ley distance.8182 When I got to the dock, I had a nose bleed. I was spitting up blood, and when I took off my spandex, there was blood on my unisuit. “I think when Mike talks about ‘super max,’ this was super max, and Joey Hansen was pissed off because I’d borrowed his uni- form. He called me a pig. “What was disappointing about 2003 was that you look at us in the pair, and then we got in the eight, and it was just not as distinct. Bryan was in the 5-seat. I was in 2-seat. We should have been stern-pair of that boat. We lost to Canada by .9 seconds, and they were hanging and swinging like we should have been.”8183 8179 Volpenhein, op. cit. 8180 Read, op. cit. 8181 Cipollone, personal conversation, 2008 8182 See Chapter 5. 8183 Read, op. cit. 2292