THE SPORT OF ROWING it as a work of fiction at the time. Dan never lets a fact get in the way of a good story.”7580 Cross: “In one of the most entertaining (if not wholly accurate) sports books ever written, Dan set about demonizing one of the American mutineers, Chris Clark, while practically sanctifying the then Oxford president Donald Macdonald. “As character assassinations go, it is ruthless.”7581 I recently spoke off the record with an acquaintance of several of the participants. This person found it difficult to reconcile the flesh-and-blood Donald with his True Blue angelic doppelganger, apparently something even Donald himself has struggled with. The fatal shortcoming of Topolski’s version of events seems to be that in reality there were no heroes and villains. There was only a confluence of two groups of individuals, flawed but passionate and determined individuals, desperately holding on to mirror-image world views. Dodd: “[True Blue] is particularly offensive [to the participants]. The portrayals have done nothing to heal the differences between a bunch of guys – oarsmen and coaches alike – whose only goal was to beat Cambridge.”7582 It is interesting to note that the only other rowing narrative in the same literary league as True Blue is The Amateurs by David Halberstam,7583 and that book, too, was popular with readers and critics but sharply criticized by many of its participants, and for many of the same issues. And to be fair, the very same criticism must certainly be heaped upon The Yanks at Oxford, again cardboard-cutout heroes and villains, only with the roles reversed. Gill’s 7580 Dodd, personal correspondence, 2008 7581 Cross, pp. 132-3 7582 Dodd, Unnatural Selection, p. 63 7583 See Chapter 139 ff. use of loaded words like “ludicrous” and “lies” and “deceitful” remind one more of partisan gutter politics than an honest attempt at faithfully recounting complex and nuanced historical events. Aha! Dan Lyons: “The press made it all about Clark versus Topolski, whether Clark deserved a seat in the boat, but that wasn’t it! “It was really about Donald Macdonald wanting to be in the Blue Boat and Donald Macdonald doing whatever he could to get in there, and it was about us saying that we were going to stand by the principles of what was right!”7584 From the point of view of the majority of the Oxford athletes and their supporters, the whole situation purportedly came down to the why, the motivations of Macdonald and Topolski and to the exalted principle of fairness! The Daily Telegraph, in a 1987 editorial during all the British and worldwide media hoopla: “There lurks an issue which has divided humankind since the days of Ancient Greece. Is the Oxford crew in times like these to be autocratically selected by the coaches and the President? Or is it to be democratically elected?”7585 There it is! The core question raised by the 1987 Oxford Mutiny! Should a rowing team be a democracy? Must it be to preserve the principle of fairness? Can it be and still succeed as a competitive team? Should a coach (or President), right or wrong, have the authority . . . or the responsibility . . . or the moral right to tell an athlete how, where, when, with whom and/or whether he or she can row? Or should it be the other way? 7584 Lyons, op. cit. 7585 Qtd. by Topolski, p. 206 2102
