THE SPORT OF ROWING “I would come to practice, but then I didn’t really interact very much with everyone to form the sister-like bonds that are so important. I was a few years older and married, so my circumstances were different. “I felt a bit like an outsider. I had left my husband back at home in order to train with the team and wanted nothing less than to be in that eight, but I was a late-comer to the scene, so to speak. I wasn’t in the original ‘core’ group that had been training together for years. I did whatever Hartmut told me to do, so some days I was sculling, some days sweeping . . . so it must have looked like I was coming and going . . . but you can’t question my commitment. I did the work, paid my dues and fought hard for my place on the team.”8039 Even to the casual observer, the ‘95 U.S. Coxless-Four just didn’t seem to square with the direction that the eight seemed to be going, and for the most part these athletes would have dim futures with Hartmut. Melissa Iverson, bow in the 1995 World Champion Coxless-Four after rowing bow in both the Silver Medal Four and Eight in ‘93, never rowed in a U.S. sweep boat again. She stroked the ninth-place Quad in 1997. Cindy Brooks in 2 had a similar fate in store. After her Gold in the 1995 Four, she was a spare in ‘96 and ‘98 and rowed bow in the eleventh-place 1999 Double. Katie Scanlon in stroke made only one other U.S. Team. She rowed in 2 in the ninth-place American Quad in 1998. Scanlon: “Why didn’t any of us make the Olympic Eight? I can’t really speak for anyone else, but I can tell you that I tried hard, as hard as I could. I think Hartmut was worried because I struggled with recurring rib fractures up until Trials, but also none of us ever made a significant 8039 Briggs, personal correspondence, 2011 enough difference in the eight to warrant Hartmut making a change. If I did, he would have.”8040 Lianne Nelson The only member of the 1995 World Champion Four who turned out to have a successful future on the U.S. National Sweep Team turned out to be Lianne Bennion Nelson, whose National Team career had begun two years before her 1995 World Championship. Nelson: “I first trained with the National Team in ‘93, and in ‘94 I made the Nations Cup8041 Coxless-Four in Paris, and we won. “There were just a few weeks before the deadline for the 1994 World Champion- ships when I came back from the Nations Cup and started winning pieces. Monica Tranel-Michini [6’0” 183cm 165lb. 75kg] had been in the single, but when Hartmut put her in the eight, that bumped out Mary McCagg. “Mary and Elizabeth McCagg had been in the U.S. Eight together since 1991. They were my heroes. In 1993, their Eight got Silver, and Hartmut had them double up in the pair, and they got Bronze in that! They had never been separated before, but now Hartmut ordered Mary to row in the spare-pair with me, and for the race-pair he chose Karen Kraft and Missy Schwen, who were very good and won World Silver Medals the next two years.8042 “Well I said, ‘Wait a second. What’s this spare stuff? Why do we have to be the spares? The Trials haven’t happened yet. If we’re in a pair, then we can go to Trials.’ “So we ended up winning the Trials, and I think Hartmut was pretty upset, like, ‘Who is this young kid, still in college?’ 8040 Ibid. 8041 FISA Under-23 Championship. 8042 They were inducted into the National Rowing Foundation Hall of Fame in 2010. 2244