The Amateurs (21 page)

With Bracken stroking Lewis's boat, Brad felt as if he were riding a bicycle backward. He did not think it was Bracken's fault any more than it was his own. In one race their quad had lost by six lengths. Lewis had never been beaten like that in his life. Then he and Bill Purdy switched seats. This time the boat Lewis had just left beat the one he had just joined. He could not remember a worse day on the water.

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

On the eve of the Lake Lucerne trip, Parker made his cuts. Even before he was cut, Jim Dietz, who knew the ax was coming, and Parker exchanged harsh words. Dietz did not hesitate to express his feeling that he had never been given a fair chance. The boats had seemed virtually set from the beginning. The double, to no one's surprise, was Altekruse and Bouscaren.
The Love Boat,
Lewis had nicknamed it, because Altekruse and Bouscaren were both good-looking and both aware of the effect of their good looks upon young women. Three of the oars in the quad were Sean Colgan, Bill Purdy and Charley Bracken. Wood and a younger sculler named Jack Frackleton would fight it out on Lucerne for the fourth spot. Parker asked Brad Lewis if he would come as the eighth man. Lewis was not enthusiastic; to him that was the position of a spare, and the real spare would be the loser of the Wood-Frackleton struggle. Lewis called the job being offered to him "the fair spare," just someone to hold hands with the other oarsmen. He was very unhappy. He did not want to be in so subordinate a position, hoping that something happened to one of the other oarsmen so he could get a chance and all the while believing in his heart that he was better than anyone in the quad. He told Allsopp that he was thinking of quitting the program. Allsopp reported his words to Parker, and Parker said that that was all right but he wanted an answer by 5:00 p.m. that day.

That afternoon Lewis drove to Boston with Bouscaren and his girlfriend. The trip took three hours, and on the way Lewis got out a pad and listed all the pros and cons of Parker's offer. The pros were that it was a chance to compete at Lucerne, which was the major regatta of the year; and there was a possibility that if either boat did poorly in Switzerland, he would get another chance. He would get a chance to row with Tiff in a double, albeit with very little time to practice together. The cons were powerful, however. He had no real role. His position would be subservient, and he rowed in the first place so he would not have to be subservient. Besides rowing with Tiff in the double, Lewis would also have to row with Frackleton and was convinced that would be a slow boat. The circumstances would not bring out his best. His mistake at the camp had been his failure to insist that he row the double with Tiff. They should have forced the issue, having earned the right by rowing two, three in the singles final.

On the way into Boston he and Bouscaren and Bouscaren's girlfriend had sat for a long time in stalled traffic in the steaming heat on one of the Boston-Cambridge bridges. As they came off, there had been a question of which way they turned to get to the Harvard boathouse. Did they follow a sign that said "Back Bay" or one that said "Somerville-Cambridge"? Lewis had said "Back Bay," the girlfriend said "Somerville-Cambridge" and Bouscaren had not known. Lewis was sure that the girlfriend was mistaken, and Bouscaren had listened to her and turned the wrong way. Lewis looked at Bouscaren a long time. He's taking instructions from a
girl
and a girl who doesn't know what the hell she's talking about, Lewis thought. His rules of masculine-feminine behavior were seriously offended. With that he decided that Bouscaren was weak and he could beat him and so right then he decided not to go to Lucerne. He only hoped that Harry would not change the boatings.

Lewis went to the Harvard boathouse and found Paul Enquist. He asked Enquist if he wanted to challenge the camp boat of Altekruse and Bouscaren. Enquist said he did. Just to be sure that he was not too close to the situation and acting on emotion, Lewis called his father in California. "Quit," his father said, "they aren't giving you enough respect." So Brad Lewis phoned Harry Parker.

"I'm going to come to Lucerne," he began.

"That's good," Parker said.

"But only if Paul and I can row in a second double," he added. "We'll pay our own way. All expenses. All we want is to be allowed to enter as the other double."

Parker thought for a moment. "I don't think that's a very practical idea," he said. In that case, Lewis told him, he would row with Enquist as a challenge boat.

Parker then phoned back to the boathouse and offered the position of the spare to Enquist, who turned it down. That's silly of Harry to call me when Brad's just told him I'm his partner, Enquist thought. The phone call angered Lewis because Parker was trying to break up his team. Parker, of course, was furious because he thought Lewis was breaking up
his
team.

Lewis and Enquist then took a double that belonged to the Olympic committee off the trailer that was returning it from Hanover to the Harvard boathouse. They put the double on a van and drove off to Lake Squam to start their workouts. It was not clear whether they had a right to the boat. Possession seemed to be nine tenths of the law. While they were doing that, Harry Parker was calling other men he had just cut, trying to get one of them to become the spare. Ridgley Johnson first accepted the offer and then turned it down, deciding to row in a challenging quad. Then Parker called Greg Montessi, who also turned him down. Only seven oarsmen went to Europe, not eight as originally planned. Old Harvard oarsmen had never seen Harry Parker so livid.

In Europe the scullers did not do particularly well. John Biglow had gone ahead to Granau, East Germany, where he had rowed badly and did not even make the finals. His confidence was clearly shaken despite the fact that he had not sent a boat ahead and was rowing in a tub. At Lucerne he had done better but not as well as he or Parker had wanted. He was not peaking as the Olympics neared. The double took fourth and fifth—good, not great; the quad rowed back-to-back races for two days. With Tiff Wood rowing it came in fourth, with Jack Frackleton rowing the next day it came in third. Wood was now the underdog in the fight for the last place in the quad; and because Parker had a limited period to get the quad ready and was now giving the major share of time in the boat to Frackleton, Wood's chances were further diminished. The team flew back to America from Switzerland, took one day off, drove to the camp in Hanover and rowed lightly on the evening of Tuesday, the nineteenth. Harry, it was rumored, would announce the final boatings on the following Monday.

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

Tiff Wood's fall from grace in so short a time was terrible and almost complete. Six weeks earlier he had been the defending world bronze medal holder and the reigning American champion. Now it appeared that he would not make a boat at all. At the trials in Princeton, his time in the semifinals had been some 29 seconds better than Frackleton's, a staggering differential. But the word from the others in the quad was that the boat seemed heavier with Wood in it. He was trying desperately to keep control of himself and not come apart. He was absolutely sure that he was better than Frackleton and some of the others, that with real seat racing, which had always saved him in the past, he could win. He simply would not accept the idea that he could not row in a team boat. In the late 1970s, before he had moved to the single, he and Gregg Stone had rowed in a very fast double that had taken second at Henley in 1977 ; and a year later, with Chris Allsopp, the assistant coach at this camp, he had taken fifth in the world. Then in 1979, preparing for the Olympics, Wood and many of the other scullers had put their efforts into team boats, not the singles. He had been part of a very good quad that Al Shealy had stroked, and they had become better and better. They had intended to row the quad in the Olympics and had been confident that they could surprise the Europeans, but the Olympic boycott had torn their world apart.

His present dilemma virtually left him without a means of showing that he was a superior oarsmen. What had always saved him in the past was that he was a great racer, and now he could not save himself by racing. He knew that part of the fault was his own, that he had not rowed well during the camp and that his lapses had taken place under the watch of Harry Parker. If Tiff Wood trusted and believed in anyone in the world of rowing, it was Harry Parker. That faith, however, did not lessen Wood's growing inner rage.

CHAPTER

TWENTY

Brad Lewis and Paul Enquist had gone off almost immediately to practice on Lake Cayuga at Ithaca, New York. If Lewis was a loner, often moody and hard to reach, Enquist was perhaps the easiest man in a rowing camp to get on with. He was always fair, and he never blamed others for his failures. The camp had been a nightmare for him, but he had felt the fault was his. When, at one point, Chris Allsopp had told him that his face lacked intensity while he was rowing, he did not get angry. Instead, he simply wondered why he was not more intense. His ego was not threatened by the loss of a race. Rowing with Paul, thought Bob Ernst, who had coached both men, was as close as Brad could come to being alone in a single. His ego could rule completely. Enquist would never challenge him. When Paul had been cut by Harry from the camp, John Biglow had expected him to be extremely wounded. "Harry was right," Enquist had said, "I wasn't rowing well. I'd have done the same thing."

The son of a commercial salmon fisherman in Seattle, Enquist had gone to Washington State in Pullman; and since he was six-six, he thought he should play basketball. But the coach had not recruited him and therefore seemed to have little interest in a walk-on. When a kindly engineering professor had mentioned crew, which was supposed to be compatible for tall people, Enquist had walked down and joined Washington State's program. The program was new, the coach was inexperienced and the team always lost. Enquist rowed in the varsity boat for four years, and in his last year the crew improved, finishing fourth in the western championships. After graduation in 1977, he worked for a few months with his father on the salmon boat, but what Paul really wanted to do was continue rowing. When the salmon season was finished, he went over to the University of Washington, where Bob Ernst let him work out in a single. Ernst was coaching the Washington women, and in the morning he would put a dozen people, most of them women, in singles and let them row. He called them his Mosquito Squadron. Everyone in it was better than Enquist. He did not feel humiliated by watching smaller women pass him in a scull. After a year he was as good as most of them. He was big but he was not strong, and he was only beginning to learn about training programs. For the next few years he worked at almost nothing but his rowing. His father was underwhelmed. "Boy, you can't eat those oars," Felix Enquist said.

Each year Paul Enquist worked on his rowing in the winter and then went back East to try himself against the eastern rowers. It took him a long time to make progress. In 1981, he reached the single-scull finals. That summer he took fourth in the elite finals in the men's national. Still the single never quite seemed his boat. He was too big, and his cadence was never right for it. He would get in the single, but no matter how hard he tried to row at a high pace, he could never get above twenty-nine. The other oarsmen, amused by his efforts and by his easygoing disposition, called him Paul Zenquist. His first breakthrough had come in 1983, after six years of trying. He had started rowing well in the double and had made the national team, paired with Brad Lewis. Stoic and relaxed Enquist might be, Ernst thought, but there was an enormous drive inside him. It just didn't show in his personality.

In 1983, when Enquist and Lewis had rowed the double, they had not done badly for a young pair—neither of them had very much international experience—but their personal relationship had been extremely difficult. They had taken sixth in the world at Duisburg, limited more by their lack of confidence and experience than by their ability. But when they had returned from Europe to prepare for a regatta at Lake Casitas, Lewis often disappeared on Enquist. Lewis was not at the motel where he was supposed to be staying. He missed practices. He was aloof and distant when he showed. Sometimes, when he did arrive, he was driving a huge white Lincoln. That was not the kind of car an oarsman drove, and it annoyed, if not the accommodating Enquist, some of the other oarsmen. Oarsmen drove Saabs and Volvos. Anyone else might have strangled Brad at that point, but Paul Enquist simply shrugged and said, "Well, Brad
is
different." Partners in a double did not necessarily have to be friends, but they had to accept each other, and this double had seemed to fall below even the acceptable minimal standard.

But now, in 1984 with the Olympics coming up, all of that was past. Lewis thought that Enquist was the almost perfect partner. With his great height and at 215 pounds, he was solid; he learned readily; he made few mistakes and was a powerful finisher. A single was too delicate a boat for him, and he was not good in the quad. The one thing that made Lewis wary was how weak Enquist's forearms were. He was sure that was the reason why Enquist had had problems in close races: His arms had tired at the end. Acting on this belief, Lewis made Enquist start working on weights and was pleased that Enquist was quickly building himself up. Like Lewis, Enquist was highly motivated. They had both come away from the camp frustrated. Lewis had been annoyed by what he felt was the Ivy League cockiness of Altekruse and Bouscaren, the sense they projected that they were in and everyone else was out.