THE ERA OF POLARIZATION was to ask each athlete to row three perfect strokes against which a mark out of ten was given to illustrate the quality of each. The boat was held stable by the other seven athletes. “An oarsman cannot row a good blade if he does not know what it should look like, and to reinforce the correct path the blade should take, oarsmen who appeared not to know the difference would be asked to score another oarsman’s bladework until everyone in the crew knew exactly a good stroke from a bad stroke. “The winter programme included workouts that helped to strengthen bladework at both ends of the stroke. Missing water on entry and riding out before the finish are common errors that get worse when rates are high and when the athletes are tired. Emphasis was on building blade control through the winter that would stand up to the high demands of racing.”7804 Mental Preparation Klepacki: “In the end, what Mike gave me wasn’t really so much the technical aspects of rowing but more a psychological approach to the sport. He’s a master at psychological empowerment, where every day the way you carry yourself, the way you eat a meal, the way you show up on time, the way you care for your equipment, the way you put the boat in the water, the way you paddle from the dock, you do it as if you were already a World Champion . . . and nothing less was acceptable. “You’d think practice was over. Practice wasn’t over until the boat was in the boat bay and you were on your way into the shower. If guys were screwing around and you had a poor paddle back to the dock, he’d make you stop and say, ‘Is that the way a World Champion would paddle back to the 7804 Spracklen, op. cit. dock? Why don’t you rethink that and do it again.’”7805 Koven: “With Spracklen, in everything that we did, we had to be acting like a champion, trying to do it the best we possibly could. That was understandable on the water during timed pieces, but some days we would play Frisbee football instead of going on the water. We’d have to run laps around the soccer field first, and I remember guys cutting the corner, and Mike got just furious. “‘While cutting corners has nothing to do with rowing, you are clearly not acting like champions.’ “That was the mindset. Everything that you did, you had to do it as well as you possibly could.”7806 Spracklen: “Athletes were corrected when they took shortcuts, but it is an exaggeration to say that I was furious. We were striving for excellence: to be the best we could be in everything we did, not just at specific times on the water. “The team were expected to train in a controlled and disciplined manner. Not only were we striving for excellence, but we were responsible for showing the way in which National Team athletes behave. The way the athletes assemble before a session, lift the boat from the rack, carry it to the water, embark and paddle away from the dock, has influence on all who stand to watch. Whether turning the boat or paddling light between rows, the athletes were expected to perform with some pride in what they were doing. But regardless of responsibility to others, our goal was for excellence with no place for anything less than being the best we could be.”7807 Klepacki: “These things may sound like minutiae, but when they are instilled in you hour after hour, day in, day out, week after 7805 Klepacki, op. cit. 7806 Koven, op. cit. 7807 Spracklen, op. cit. 2175
