The rower need to know technique and has to be in shape. He won't wrong by using strategy. Yet what it takes to win races is the ability to reach inside and pull out something to keep you going - no, to go faster - when you have nothing left to give. There's a word for what that takes and the word is not magic, the word is guts.

Think of aerobics plus weight lifting minus the music or camaraderie. Combine unalloyed endurance with straightforward strength and demand poise, timing, and practiced form as well. Think of pure pain: that's the ergometer.

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.

Ergometer is Greek for 'work meter'

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.

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.

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.