The Amateurs (14 page)

Lewis believed that if there was any difference between himself and the eastern rowers, it was that they might have accumulated enough racing experience to be mentally tougher. They could be behind in a race by a length and not panic because many times, as collegiate oarsmen, they had been behind and still won. But for someone who came out of a losing program, being behind was a natural state; if you fell behind, you either panicked or you expected to stay there. Tiff Wood had had that toughness built into him when he was seventeen or eighteen. Now, at twenty-nine, Lewis was still trying to learn it, and Tiff Wood was his role model. A photo of the famed Rude and Smooth crew, blown up poster size and hanging outside Harry Parker's office in the Harvard boathouse, fascinated Lewis. To him it was not a photo of eight men but a photo of only one, Tiff Wood, hair shaggy, dark glasses on. Wood might be slightly out of synch with the others and his head might be completely out of position, but looking at him, Lewis saw an image of such intense concentration and such violent physical exertion that his eyes never moved on to the others.

He was so sure that he was now Wood's chief rival that he had turned down the invitation to come to Cambridge to practice with the other scullers. He saw no benefit in going. He was already getting more time on the water than anyone else; and he was receiving very good coaching from Mike Livingston, whom he had come to trust. Livingston was a cultural hybrid, a California boy who had gone to Harvard and rowed on championship crews, including the 1972 Olympic crew, which had won a silver medal at Munich. He had done exceptionally well in college, had gone on to law school and had for a time been a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union in the Pacific Northwest before turning to coaching in the late 1970s at Cal Berkeley. The analytical side of him was the Harvard-educated lawyer committed to causes that were not always popular. But the side of him that was the child of California and the 1960s was fascinated with the unknown limits of human experience, the secrets of the mind. A devotee of the writings of Carlos Castaneda, Livingston was convinced that a knowledge of Eastern religion and the study of Yoga could help an athlete to focus and control his or her latent physical powers. At Berkeley he had searched for ways to blend the two experiences together, the rational and the secret sources of strength. He had shared an office with Nort Thornton, the Cal Berkeley swimming coach, who also believed that coaches were fast approaching the outer limits of what they could teach their athletes in terms of strength, endurance and technique. The real frontier in coaching, Thornton believed, was in the area of mental training.

Sports psychology was already a burgeoning field, and it was likely to become even more important in the future. The victory that Livingston sought was over the inner self, an attempt to bring an athlete to his oneness. To that end he tried to create what he described as "white-hot concentration." Crucial to his teachings was what Castaneda taught, the idea of maximizing each moment, or living each day as if it were the last. This was essential not so much for race days, which were already heightened experiences, but for practices, which were usually routine and humdrum. If the athlete was immeasurably toughened in practice, mental toughness on the day of a race would become second nature.

After coaching successfully at Cal Berkeley for three years, Livingston had grown restless and by 1983 was living in Hawaii. During the past year, he had regularly flown back to Newport to coach a group of older men known as the Dirty Dozen who had never rowed before but who were going to make an Olympic challenge in the sweeps. In Newport, he had met Brad Lewis. If Lewis had been suspicious of his past coaches, Livingston was precisely the coach he had been looking for. Livingston was a volunteer, he did not intrude, he did not seek to change anything but rather to reinforce much of what Lewis was already doing. The best thing about him was that he believed in Brad Lewis's abilities and his chance to do well in the single trials.

It was Livingston borrowing from Castaneda, who taught Lewis that the athlete became a warrior. By that he meant a warrior who wins a battle over his inner self, not a samurai warrior, who goes off to fight with others. Lewis seized on the idea, though in his mind the warrior became more of a samurai, a man on a mission of vengeance. Livingston, for his part, was impressed by what Lewis was doing. On his own, Lewis had put together a highly original and exceptionally complete work program. To Livingston, what had kept Lewis going all those years with so little outside support was the idea of improvement as an end in itself. Because he was so dedicated, he had always improved, and because he was always improving, he loved the sport as an index of self-measurement. When Lewis began to ask Livingston for more help, it was Livingston who was cautious. "Brad," he told him, "one of the most powerful aspects of everything you've done is that you've taken complete responsibility for your own workouts and your entire program. Don't lose confidence now. You've been more right about it than you think."

In addition to toughening his mind, in the past year and a half Lewis had worked particularly hard to build up his strength. His cousin Mitch, who had competed at a high level as a weight lifter, was working in Glendora, California, as a therapist and trainer, teaching weight lifting to other athletes. Among his pupils were some members of the Olympic judo team and some track and field athletes. Some rowers shied away from the weight room because of a belief that lifting weights made you musclebound. Oarsmen were supposed to be lean and quick and powerful; they should not look like the Incredible Hulk. Mitch Lewis disagreed; according to him, it was possible to design a weight program that added strength without sacrificing quickness. The Soviets and East Germans were doing this with their oarsmen. It was nonsense to think that greater strength did not allow a rower to exert more pressure on the oar; and if he exerted more pressure, the boat would move faster. Since Brad Lewis saw lack of strength as his only flaw, he had been amenable to working out with his cousin. They would have roughly a year and a half before the Olympics.

Realizing that the weight room was boring for most non-lifters, Mitch Lewis devised a program that would aim for small increments of progress readily achieved, so that Brad would have a tangible sense of accomplishment. The program was also designed to produce results in Brad's rowing as quickly as possible. So three times a week, Brad Lewis had given up his afternoon rowing and worked out with his cousin. In the process, Brad had taken a body that was already big and powerful and made it more so. Within two months, his times for rowing around Lido Island began to drop. One day in October, he called his cousin up. "My God, Mitch," he said, "I cut 23 seconds off my best time for Double Lido today." Brad was hooked; from then on it was easy to keep him working in the weight room.

He had been big, six-four and 190 pounds, and now he had added ten pounds, all in his arms and shoulders. He had done three basic lifts: the squat lift, the dead lift and the bench press. He had gotten up to 315 pounds on the squat lift, 405 on the dead lift and 260 on the bench press. In the world of weight lifting those might be little more than good numbers for a beginner, but for a rower they were impressive; and if that strength could be employed in rowing, there was no question he had improved himself over the past year. (One day at the sculling camp in Hanover, John Biglow had walked in on him while he was working on the bench press. Biglow had tried his hand at 135 pounds, which was the weight Lewis was working on. After struggling through two repetitions, Biglow had quickly gotten out of there. Lewis did not have the heart to tell Biglow that those were the weights he warmed up on, not the ones he exercised with.)

The Princeton weekend was expensive for Lewis. His total expenditure came to nearly $4,000. There was the cost of shipping his shell to the East Coast; and there was the cost of air tickets for him and his cousin Mitch. He also paid Mitch $600 for the time he was missing from his job. Mitch was along to help coach him and to give him body rubs during the heats. That, Brad knew, would be an immense advantage since it would allow his body to come back more quickly after a race than his competitors' could.

CHAPTER

TWELVE

There were no surprises in the heats. Tiff Wood, rowing easily and comfortably, posted the best time, 7:04.1. It was important for him to row the best time; anything less was a sign of vulnerability. Biglow's time was the second best, 7:06.43, and Bouscaren's the third, 7:08.02. Brad Lewis won his heat, and Jim Dietz had come in second in his, 7 seconds behind Biglow. He would have to go to the reps. That did not bother him too much. He had rowed relatively easily and indeed he would survive the reps.

When Tiff Wood saw the draw for the semifinals, he became enraged. The draw was pure chance, but almost all the power was in one heat—he, Biglow, Bouscaren, and Dietz, of whom only three would survive. That meant that no one would be able to coast. Three top contenders in a semi was easy; they could set their pace and stay leisurely ahead of the fourth man. Now that luxury was gone. To make matters worse, the top oarsmen in the other semi would be able to conserve their energy and come out of their heat more rested. (Wood was right; the fourth man in his heat was four seconds under the winning time of the other heat.) Like Wood, Jim Dietz knew exactly what the draw for the semifinals meant: To make the finals, he would have to go all out in the semi. His plan to sneak in and row one great surprise race was dead.

By contrast, Brad Lewis's confidence grew even stronger. He had sat there and listened while the officials had called off the names of the oarsmen in the first semifinal: Bouscaren, Biglow, Dietz, Wood. He had waited for his name, and when they had not read it, he had heaved a sigh of relief. The other four were going to kill each other in their semi, while he was going to be so able to coast in his that he did not even intend to win it.

The semifinal heat was very tight and very well rowed. Wood won, Biglow was a close second and Bouscaren and Dietz were in a virtual dead heat for third. Dietz had surprised everyone. Usually he was almost as fast off the mark as an eight, but this time he had conserved his energy, held back and unleashed a furious closing drive. He had pushed Bouscaren so hard that Wood, who was keying on Bouscaren, had been forced to give a hard ten with about thirty strokes to go. That had made Wood the winner. Dietz was sure he had beaten Bouscaren. His friends were sure of it. Most of the other rowers thought he had won. Yet it was called a dead heat. Dietz was furious. He was sure that Harry Parker, whom he considered an old nemesis, was behind it. He demanded to see the videotape, but the videotape, because the camera was at too low an angle, showed nothing conclusive. Another rower had blocked out the finish between the two boats, and both were allowed to qualify.

The decision did not please Wood. Bouscaren was his friend in a loose definition of the term, but it was an odd and wary friendship, based only on their competition. If Wood and Biglow used their mutual love of the sport to bind themselves into an unlikely but genuine friendship, Wood and Bouscaren grated on each other. The semifinal had been a hard race for almost everyone. Dietz had been forced to use up the energy he wanted to save for the final, and there was a possibility that Tiff Wood had, too. At the end, Wood had turned to Biglow and said, "good race." The words had pleased Biglow, for they indicated that Wood had been forced to push himself, which might be an advantage. If an event was about pure boat speed, it aided Wood; if it was about endurance—and two hard races were an endurance test—it might favor Biglow.

No one, at least no one in America, could come from behind against Biglow, and few could hold him off at the end. Tiff Wood was powerful enough to hold off Biglow if he had a length lead at the start of the last five hundred meters. But even that would be shaved very close. The race was two thousand meters, and the final five hundred meters lasted about 1:50 minutes. Tiff Wood could sprint at the end, but he could not sprint the entire 500 meters the way Biglow could.

The reason for this was physiological. There are two kinds of muscles for athletes: slow twitch and fast twitch. Slow-twitch muscles allow an athlete to replenish himself and are ideal for sports that demand great endurance. These same athletes usually have trouble generating quick, early bursts of speed. Fast-twitch muscles generate speed very quickly but often cannot replenish their energy, a tissue cut of John Biglow's body revealed that 72 percent of his muscles were slow twitch, while Wood's count was in the low sixties. Harry Parker believed that Joe Bouscaren's count (Bouscaren had never had the biopsy) was a good deal less. Therefore, Joe, the most elegant oar of the three, was the rabbit of the group. He could generate power more quickly than the others, but he tended to burn out at the end.

Joe Bouscaren had thought about the final for a long time and had carefully planned his race. He would go out early, but not so fast that he would burn himself out. The semifinal had been as hard on him as on the others. The challenge by Dietz at the end had caught him by surprise, and Bouscaren had been forced to give everything he had. He was aware that he had almost missed the cut and that Dietz's friends were saying that Harry had lobbied for him.

Of all the oarsmen in the final, John Biglow tended to be the most consistent and the most secure. He always rowed his own race, and if someone else went out too quickly at the start, Biglow did not change his game plan. What he did in each five-hundred-meter piece was very much like what he did in all the other five-hundred-meter pieces. He had felt increasingly confident going into the final. In the semifinal, he had started out poorly. He had been off balance on the first stroke, and because the first stroke had been poor, it had taken him several strokes to settle down. In the immense anxiety created by the idea of the race, he thought of giving up and not rowing at all. He had had the same feeling in the past and had recognized it as a form of anxiety attack. That anxiety came, he knew, from the pain, as if his body were trying to get him to quit. For a moment he had felt himself think, I simply will not row hard today because I don't feel like racing. It was a form of instant terror to which he had never given in. He gradually settled down and he had rowed well in the semifinal. What pleased him at the end was his sense that race by race he was rowing more strongly.