THE ERA OF POLARIZATION After the 2000 Olympics, Mike Spracklen accepted for a second time the position of Head Men’s Coach of Canada. Spracklen: “When I left Britain, it took them another three years before they realized they had to train and then some to win again. “That was disappointing in a way because when you finally go somewhere, even if they don’t like you, you’d like to feel that you’d left something behind. They didn’t win for another three years, so I hadn’t left anything behind.7893 “My preference was to have stayed in England and help the team back onto the podium, but management made sure this was not to be, and so I returned to Canada.”7894 Guin Batten: “Now it is over to Katherine et al . . . to finish the job and get British women’s first Olympic GOLD!”7895 Jamie Koven, World Champion Single Sculler Koven: “During the winter of ‘95-‘96, Mike Spracklen had said to the team, ‘Okay, you guys are good in pairs. Now I want you to switch sides in the pair or row the single so that you pick up something new.’”7896 Spracklen: “Oarsmen who row only one side of the boat develop one side of their body more than the other, and sculling was adopted to help prevent physical imbalance. The alternative was to change sides regularly between port and starboard. “Oarsmen who row both sides develop bodies evenly and are clearly an advantage 7893 Qtd. by Moag, op. cit., p. 47 7894 Spracklen, op. cit. 7895 G. Batten, op. cit. 7896 Koven, op. cit. “After Atlanta, we all were disappointed with the performance, and I decided to switch to the single because everybody else was retiring. Other people eventually came back, but everyone stopped for ‘97. “I went back out to San Diego to keep training with Spracklen. I was the only person there, and he and I were doing these intense workouts for a week until he was let go by USRowing. That was a big surprise to both of us. Mike soon returned to his home in England. “I still wanted Mike to coach me, but I also tried to find a coach who was based in the U.S. That’s when I started working with 7897 Spracklen, op. cit. to the team at times of injury. They also have a better chance of making a crew, but even this was insufficient motivation for them to change sides. “There were many benefits from sculling, but the main reason for including it in the programme was for symmetrical development.”7897 Koven: “So he forced us to make that shift. It wasn’t part of the selection process per se, but the way Spracklen does these workouts, you know six times 2,000 meters timed, and if you didn’t have a single, you were forced to do it on the wrong side in a pair, and not only were you on the wrong side, but the other guy with you in the pair was also rowing on the wrong side. So that encouraged us to all get our own singles. “Silken Laumann was part of our team, and almost everybody in our eight was rowing singles, and we were having very competitive practices leading up to the Atlanta Olympics. “So Mike was the one who actually taught me how to scull and got me going, and Silken was a huge part to that, too. I was just basically trying to copy everything that Silken was doing, and we were about the same speed. 2197