The Amateurs (17 page)

"Do you want me to switch to a double or a quad, and for Tiff to row the single?" Biglow asked.

Parker knew that more than anything else in the world, John Biglow wanted to row the single in the Olympics. This, then, was treacherous water. It was time to call a stop. "John, that question was answered on Sunday. You're the single sculler," Parker said. He was, he thought, dealing with a very unusual man.

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

If the Sunday of the trial had been bad for Tiff Wood, the Monday after the trial was even worse. That was the day the Soviets pulled out of the 1984 Olympics; and Tiff Wood, who was almost never on television in his years of glory, was besieged by local television reporters. He was local, he was an Olympic-level athlete, he was articulate. He did four shows in one afternoon. "Are we getting our just due for 1980?" one of the reporters asked. "As a member of the 1980 team, I think there is all the more reason to let the athletes compete," he answered, "but many of us were afraid something like this would happen. If only the Soviets pull out, this isn't so bad. But if the East Germans, who are the best rowers in the world, stay out, then it makes the games less meaningful."

"Does that mean that a medal will be less sweet?" he was asked.

"Medals are always sweet," he answered.

"Will this cut down on the fans coming to see you?" another reporter asked.

"No one comes to see the rowing, anyway," he replied.

The next day he joined Biglow at the boathouse. Biglow was wearing a Soviet rowing jacket and a Soviet rowing hat in protest. He was angry.

It was like being cheated, he said. He did not care very much about the Soviets, but the withdrawal of the East Germans mattered. He had rowed against Rudiger Reiche of East Germany, whom he liked even though Reiche was not allowed to talk to him. The East Germans frowned on fraternization. But Reiche was cool and graceful, and he would wink at Biglow. The wink seemed to say, "Listen, a lot of this is crap, but being an athlete, doing what we do at this level, is something special, and we have this together. I know about you and you know about me, and that is enough. We are connected."

The failure of the Soviets and the Eastern Bloc nations to attend the Olympics did not dramatically change the projected order of finish for the singles. The medal the American scullers were most likely to win remained a bronze, for Biglow, at Lake Casitas near Santa Barbara, California, would be rowing against two of the greatest scullers of all time, Pertti Karppinen of Finland and Peter-Michael Kolbe of West Germany. Karppinen, who had won the gold in 1976 and 1980, was probably the greatest sculler of all time, greater even than the legendary three-time gold medalist Vasily Ivanov of the Soviet Union. Kolbe, in any other era, might also have three golds.

Karppinen was a Ruthian figure, someone so far above the others that he turned his event into a sport of his own. To Biglow, Karppinen was a god. One did not even think of beating him. One hoped, instead, that a fever still worked in Kolbe's brain so that he would make one last mad attempt to beat Karppinen, burn out and leave an unlikely chance for the silver. For Biglow, just to be in a race with Karppinen was a privilege.

Karppinen was six-seven and weighed about 220 pounds. His upper body was massive, and his shoulders and his chest might have been forged by a demented left-wing sculptor who wanted to project the idea of what a people's worker truly looked like. Yet he was surprisingly supple. That a man that big and strong could compete in so small and delicate a boat was extraordinary. The scull was only twelve inches across, and even the slightest mistake or shift of weight could flip it. Karppinen was the perfectly cast Scandinavian country boy, big, powerful, uncorrupted by modern ways. The son of a stonecutter in the small town of Vehmaa on the eastern coast of Finland, he was one of six children. When, in 1976, he had won the first of his gold medals, most of the local villagers had made a pilgrimage to the Karppinen home to offer their congratulations; the congratulations had to be offered personally because the Karppinens did not own a phone.

Karppinen had started sculling as a boy, and by 1974, at twenty-one, he was sculling seriously. At first he was big and awkward and weak, and he tended to fall behind near the end. At Montreal, in 1976, Kolbe, a
Wunderkind
of sculling, a world champion at the age of nineteen, was the heavy favorite. He was six-four, powerful, already skilled in his technique. In the single-scull final, he had gone out quickly, and at a thousand meters he had held a commanding lead. Karppinen, then virtually unknown, was 8 seconds behind him, a seemingly insurmountable time lag. Then Karppinen started his sprint. The finish was one of the most dramatic in Olympic history. With two hundred meters to go, Kolbe still looked unbeatable, but he was beginning to fade. Karppinen was rowing with a fury. With fifty meters to go, Kolbe was still ahead. With fifteen meters left, Karppinen passed him to win by 2.5 seconds. In 1980, Karppinen won another gold, at Moscow, and Kolbe, observing the American boycott, did not compete. Now, if the predictions were accurate, Karppinen would get his third gold at Casitas; Kolbe, his second silver; and John Biglow would have a good chance at a bronze.

John Biglow left the camp in Hanover early to row in Europe in a series of lesser races before a major regatta at Lucerne, which, in turn, was the final tune-up for the Olympics. He did not row well in Europe and quickly became frustrated with himself. His back was better, but something was wrong.

What was most upsetting was that he was not rowing as well as he had when he had first come on the international rowing scene three years earlier, at the age of twenty-three. The first international final in which he had competed had been only the seventh race of his sculling career, and his first heat at Munich had been only his fifth singles race. Yet he had done amazingly well. The summer of 1981 still had a dreamlike quality for him. He had expected that the ascent to the American title would be a slow one, and instead he had won the sculling trial in his first year. Then the national team had gone to Munich for the world championship. Harry Parker was the coach, and one day he had told Biglow, "Except for Kolbe, I'm not sure there's anyone here you can't beat." (Karppinen was rowing a double that year, staying out of the singles competition.) Biglow, listening to Parker, thought his voice was off, that Harry did not believe his own words. He thinks I have an outside chance at fifth, Biglow decided. In his world-championship heat he rowed against Ricardo Ibarra of Argentina, who had just won the Henley singles and who Biglow's old coach, Frank Cunningham, thought a magnificent oarsman. But Biglow, too young and inexperienced to be scared, passed Ibarra with five hundred meters to go. Although he waited for the expected resurgence from Ibarra, Ibarra had not surged, and Biglow simply widened his margin of victory.

Not only had Biglow, to his surprise, won the heat, but he had also turned in the fastest qualifying time. It can't be this easy, he thought. In the semifinal behind Kolbe of West Germany, who was the favorite, he had taken third. That had been his only nervous moment because his own goal had been to make the final, which meant he had to do well in the semi.

In the final he had felt particularly free. I have nothing to lose, he thought, because I don't even belong here. He had rowed against Kolbe and Rudiger Reiche, and they had gone out far ahead of him. But he had rowed his own race, and he had won the bronze at the age of twenty-three. Harry Parker had been at the finish line, smiling in a way Biglow had never seen him smile and clicking away with his camera, taking hundreds of photos. Could what happened be that important to Harry? Biglow wondered. At the end he had felt like crying; he had achieved everything he had wanted and had medaled in a world regatta in just one year. He remembered standing on the platform with Kolbe and Reiche and thinking, I am with two of the greatest rowers in the world. I am the bronze.

He had spent the rest of the day practicing the ancient trade of international oarsmen, bartering uniforms with other rowers. He had come away with a good Swiss sweat suit (less exotic than a Soviet suit, which he already owned, but of better quality) and a West German rowing shirt. That night his friends were going out on the town, but all he wanted to do was fall asleep. His celebration, fittingly enough, was within himself, just as his discovery was of himself. Up until that day he had always played with the idea of going to medical school. He had taken some premed courses and had not done particularly well in them. As such his self-doubts had won out and he had held back from committing himself to medical school. But now, having accomplished this, he felt there was nothing he could not achieve. He decided to go back to school, take more premed courses and aim for medicine.

In 1982 he had returned, more confident and more ambitious. Neither Kolbe nor Karppinen was rowing, but Reiche, at six-five and 200 pounds, was virtually the equal of Kolbe. In the first heat, Biglow had rowed against Reiche. Believing (erroneously) that only one man would qualify for the semifinals, he had pushed himself hard. It had been a very strong race. Biglow was racing hard because he thought he had to win, and Reiche was racing hard because he liked to race. Reiche won by .1 second. Biglow later learned that at the end of the race Reiche had turned to his coach and asked, "Well, what do we do now?"

Biglow believed he could win the final. He concentrated on Reiche and paid little attention to Yakusha of the Soviet Union, whom he had beaten earlier. Reiche and Yakusha had gone out early, but with 750 meters left, Biglow had started sprinting. In the last five hundred meters he had a quarter length on Yakusha. Then the Soviet sprinted hard himself and moved past Biglow. It was the first time anyone had rowed through John Biglow in a single scull near the end of a race. Biglow had his second bronze, 1.41 seconds behind Reiche. This time, he realized, Reiche had been ready for him.

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

All of that promised even greater achievements in the future. But Biglow's performances had leveled out. He had been limited by his back in 1983, and his return to form had been slower than he had expected. As he prepared for the Olympics, Biglow more and more began to wonder whether he was concentrating his efforts in the right direction. It was as if he were caught between two conflicting sets of coaches, his eastern ones and his western ones, who reflected the schism in the world of U.S. rowing. His eastern coaches, Harry Parker and Tony Johnson, were disciples of men such as Joe Burk in this country and Karl Adam, coach of the famed Ratzeburg crew in West Germany. When Adam's crew, made up of basically Ratzeburg oarsmen, had won in the 1960 Olympics, he had become an influential figure in America. The Ratzeburg rowers had shown that strength and endurance could take precedence over form. They emphasized endurance training, their oarsmen ran great distances, they lifted weights, they worked on the ergometer and they rowed on the water to improve their stamina. Coaches such as Parker and Johnson were innately wary of tinkering with a young man's form if he was rowing well and moving boats. "Do it, just do it," Tony Johnson had always said. "Pull hard and row. Don't think about it." A centipede, Johnson added, could not walk if it had to think of which leg came next.

By contrast, Biglow's West Coast coaches were traditionalists who valued form more than power. They were men such as Frank Cunningham, who had stroked Harvard, and Charley McIntyre, a successful sculler who had rowed with his brother in a national-championship double. Their mentor was George Pocock, a legendary sculler and boat builder in the Seattle area. They considered those who favored power over technique the Philistines of sculling. Power over technique in an eight sweep was one thing, but not in a scull. They were convinced that the Europeans' great advantage in sculling lay in an emphasis on technique. McIntyre chauvinistically raged against the American coaches who listened to Adam, whose teachings they had to translate; Pocock and his followers not only were better teachers but also had written in English. To Cunningham and McIntyre, Biglow, more than any other American sculler, was
their
sculler and
their
hope. After going East to college, he had strayed from the true course and been seduced by the theory of power and endurance. He had gone over to the Easterners and sacrificed style for strength. Not surprisingly, they believed his rowing had slipped and he had stopped improving.

McIntyre was particularly outspoken on the subject. As far as he was concerned, Biglow's prowess came from his being more graceful on the slide than other, stronger racers. The slide was the moving seat upon which the rower sat, and it was Biglow's particular skill to be able to apply his power smoothly without lurching and jerking on the slide. That made boat movement considerably smoother. "Beat them on the slide," McIntyre always lectured Biglow. He hated it when Biglow went for power and abandoned his technique. "He's chopping wood again," McIntyre would now say, meaning Biglow was putting too much back into his motion and losing his rhythm. The previous spring he had written Biglow a long, angry letter. "Stop! Stop! Stop! Or to hell with you because you won't listen to me anyway." This spring, rowing poorly in Europe and watching the excellent performances of the American sweep oarsmen whose coaches emphasized technique, Biglow was not so sure that Cunningham and McIntyre were wrong. Perhaps, he thought, his technique had slipped and it had cost him.

John Biglow had been very well coached as a young man, principally by Frank Cunningham, a onetime Harvard stroke who believed that he understood the western migration of the Biglows, since he had made a comparable one himself. Cunningham had grown up as the son of privileged Easterners, had gone to Harvard and, because of his size, had rowed there on the lightweight crew. His college years had been interrupted by the war. Marine boot camp had been a revelation to him. He had found himself the best-educated man in his unit, yet, in an odd way, the least free. All the other young men were talking about what they were going to do after the war, but Cunningham knew only what his family intended for him to do. He had never thought of determining his own future. The idea of opening up his own business, as some of these young men were planning, was absolutely beyond him. He was a Cunningham, and while Cunninghams were not exactly Cabots or Lodges, they took their obligations equally seriously. For Frank Cunningham, there were too many standards to be met, too many links to the past.