Rowing Quotes - Page 6

The slow boat-I know it's the slow boat because I've been watching them for thirty-three weeks-won the first piece by a full length. Then the fast boat won the second piece. And so it went for the next four pieces, back and forth. Conclusion: I hate seat racing.

Brad Alan Lewis

Hate, Racing, Three

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Rigging is like Zen meditation. You must bend over the boat until your back is breaking, until your brain is filled with numbers and fractions of numbers, until you can accurately measure an oarlock's pitch without bothering to use the pitch meter. Only then will you see the way of eternal rigging happiness.

Brad Alan Lewis

Numbers, Meditation, Brain

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Immediately upon entering the weighing-in zone, I sensed an oppressive tension in the air, the lightweights staring and glaring at each other, snarling like lean, frenzied dogs. Extreme hunger has a way of creating these emotions in even the most mil-mannered people.

Brad Alan Lewis

Dog, Air, Creating

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Hundreds of feet above us, cars whisked by, oblivious to our drama. Up there were the shortcuts, the excuses, the world of infinite possibilities separating man and his potential. We had four miles and the best competition in the nation. We linked hands in the boat and committed ourselves to each other.

Stefan Kieszling

Drama, Men, Hands

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Unlike boxers-or any professional athlete for that matter-rowers have little motivation to do it longer than necessary. With a modest amount of self-realization, you'll know when you have acquired the nebulous gifts that rowing has to offer, whether it's courage or a strengthened soul or a powerful body. Once you have it, drop back ten yards and punt. Someone new will pick up the ball and run with it.

Brad Alan Lewis

Running, Motivation, Powerful

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After hooking up the fuel line and pumping a little gasoline through the hose, I prepared for a workout on the 'coach's ergometer'.

Brad Alan Lewis

Workout, Fuel, Gasoline

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Physically, rowing was remarkable resistant to the camera... the camera liked power exhibited more openly, and the power of the oarsmen [is] exhibited in far too controlled a setting. Besides, the camera liked to focus on individuals, and except for the single scull, crew was sport without faces.

David Halberstam

Sports, Focus, Cameras

David Halberstam (2012). “The Amateurs: The Story of Four Young Men and Their Quest for an Olympic Gold Medal”, p.26, Open Road Media

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Rowing is an absurdly simple sport. I can easily guide a beginner throught the right technical motions. The difficulty arises when the beginner attempts to repeat those motions on a bumpy race course, at 40 strokes a minute, with his heart rate zooming, and an opponent charging up his stern.

Brad Alan Lewis

Sports, Heart, Simple

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On June 14, 1998, I pushed off under quiet gray skies from Nags Head, N.C, in the American Pearl, a 23 foot long boat made of plywood and fiberglass. I planned to row 3,637 miles across the North Atlantic to France. I was alone. There were no chase vessels. No one planned to drop food or equipment to me along the way. The physical goal was easy to explain: I was attempting to do something no American and no woman had ever done - to row solo across an ocean.

Tori Murden

Ocean, June, Sky

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Rowing was not simple for me. I nodded whenever the instructor made a point, as if I understood, but I could as easily have assembled the space shuttle as have repeated the moves she was explaining.

Barry S. Strauss

Moving, Simple, Space

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[He] would drive his sculling boat through mile after mile, in a silent brutal programe of conditioning - he would work all alone, at first light, punishing himself without mercy. His was the private dignity of the lone athlete, with a grim purpose, fighting a solitary war with himself, toward a goal only he can see.

Daniel Topolski

War, Athlete, Fighting

Daniel Topolski, Patrick Robinson (2013). “True Blue: The Oxford Boat Race Mutiny”, p.32, Random House

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Picasso spent hundereds of hours carefully planning his masterpieces. The sketchbooks were filled with ideas, bits and pieces, test runs, none of it meant to be seen by anyone. In a similar way, rowing practices are our sketchbooks, where we prepared our raceday masterpiece.

Brad Alan Lewis

Running, Practice, Ideas

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Coach's Rule: never admit a lack of experience or knowledge. Carry on at all times as though you've guided a hundred champion crews. Honesty is not the best policy when leading a bunch of college rowers. They are looking for strong, disciplined leadership and not a kinder, gentler coach. Once you've established a certain attitude and demeanor, it's nearly impossible to change to a difference mode in mid-season.

Brad Alan Lewis

Strong, Honesty, Attitude

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Every student of physics knows the axiom 'nature abhors a vacuum.' A little known corollary is that 'rowing coaches detest sending their crews in early.' Coaches will always find something to fill the end-of-practice vacuum.

Brad Alan Lewis

Practice, Vacuums, Littles

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White Hot Concentration is the unappreciated fruit of hard ligting, especially squats. When your in the squat rack, with a serious amount of weight overhead, your life literally depends on maintaining concentration. You learn to block out the swirling images in the mirror, the obnoxious chatter of the people next to you, the fat drop of sweat running down your nose. Once you've mastered this concentration in the weight room, duplicating it on the race course is relatively easy. Champions have only a few things in common. One weapon they all possess is White Hot Concentration.

Brad Alan Lewis

Running, Block, White

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The last great unknown, in terms of physiological training, is the optimum length of a piece. Is three minutes enough? Is ten minutes too much? No one knows. Perhaps someday the question will be answered-we'll find out that thirteen minutes is the perfect length for a training piece when preparing for a 2000 meter race. Until then, coaches will continue exploring the whole scale, up and down, from thirty seconds to sixty minutes and more, in hopes of capturing the optimum time.

Brad Alan Lewis

Race, Sixty Minutes, Perfect

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Those of us who stayed were younger, more tractable. Less sure of ourselves socially and intellectually, we gave ourselves to the sport with little idea of what we could give or receive.

Stefan Kieszling

Sports, Ideas, Giving

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To hell with that. If a guy can pull a big erg, I can teach him how to row.

Mike Teti

Guy, Ergs, Hell

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In college, I was an editor on the student daily... To the extent that I noticed the existence of crew at all, I saw only what appeared to be big-boned acolytes who rose at dawn.

Barry S. Strauss

College, Editors, Rose

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The Greek in me wanted to know what it felt like to pull an oar. The intellectual wondered about how to get eight individuals to move to the same beat. The athlete wanted to check what has been described as the ultimate workout. The romantic craved seeing if the quirkiness of the sport - there is after all, little practical value to oarsmanship in the postindustrial age - stirred his blood.

Barry S. Strauss

Sports, Workout, Moving

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The single sculler, alone on the river at dawn, or spotlighted in his lane during a race, is th emost romantic, the most quixotic figure in all rowing.

Barry S. Strauss

Race, Rivers, Dawn

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Eakins rejected gentlemen athletics as his theme. Instead, he took a subject that had been the stuff of illustrated weeklies and the penny press and turned it into fine art. Eakins celebrates not fire from heaven but honest sweat, not genius but hard work.

Barry S. Strauss

Art, Hard Work, Fire

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Rowing it was pointed out, was a sport that risked few injuries. So it was, I ould discover, but only if you did it right.

Barry S. Strauss

Sports, Injury, Ifs

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Ergometer is Greek for 'work meter'

Barry S. Strauss

Greek, Meter

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If rowing is a trial then the ergometer is the courtroom, the meter is the jury. And an honest jury at that, because the numbers do not lie.

Barry S. Strauss

Lying, Numbers, Trials

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