It highlights one particularly important lesson: winning sometimes requires that one not just be better, but much better than your opponent. A competitor faces not only an opponent but an array of surrounding factors, such as an umpire, luck, and his or her own personal difficulties.
While these are hard truths, they are also invigorating truths, because while natural talent, resources, and other external factors are essentially out of one’s control, there is always at least one way that a person can get closer to being much better, or twice as good: hard work.
The Odds Against the Boys
Brown first describes the backgrounds of the coaches and teammates who put together the winning team in 1936. Their lives all came together at the University of Washington in the mid-’30s. At that time, the college team that won the national trials would become the American representative in eight-man rowing at the Olympics.Brown deftly weaves an account of the personal challenges and growth of each member and coach, adding a crash course for the reader on rowing, particularly eight-man rowing. Finally, he skillfully sets these stories in the context of the Great Depression and the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany.
All of these elements converge at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. While the whole book chronicles how a handful of men and, similarly, how America encountered and overcame adversity, it’s in the months leading to the Olympics and in the games themselves that the significance of hard work is most apparent.
On one hand, the 1936 University of Washington rowing team was clearly the best in the field, not only in America but in the world. They had already set a world record in the preliminary race on Aug. 12.
Nevertheless, on Aug. 14, the day of the final, the U.S. rowers were not only rowing against their competitors but also against a formidable combination of factors conspiring against them: a sick teammate, a bad starting position, bad luck, and, possibly, bad will from the host country.
Donald Hume, as essential as all the other rowers, struggled with a fever that he’d had since June. To add insult to injury, the U.S. boat was positioned in the lane farthest from the lake’s shore. This was where the water was choppiest and least suited to easy rowing. Was this the luck of the draw, or did the Germans interfere with the positioning of the boats? There is no documentation to say one way or another, but the Germans and the Italians had the two lanes closest to the shore.
Finally, as the American team took the sixth lane on a blustery day, struggling to keep their boat pointed in the right direction, they missed the start signal. Missing the start signal itself meant near-certain defeat. A few minutes later and two-thirds through the race, it looked like Hume was not going to make it through the race in a conscious state, let alone help them to victory.
Yet the seemingly impossible happened. The coxswain, Bobby Moch, somehow got Hume to gather all his reserves and lead the other rowers in picking up the pace. They overcame a boat-length, then a half-boat length.
Brown describes the comeback perfectly: the Americans were “reeling the leaders in seat by seat.”
Before the Big Race
The story of this victory is not just about that day, but, above all, about the great effort each man put in over the course of more than three years to get there, the incessant preparation of the coaches, and the overcoming of countless daily challenges. If either rower or coach had not faced and conquered those daily challenges, they might still have been the best boat, but they probably would have lost the Olympics.
