The Greek in me wanted to know what it felt like to pull an oar. The intellectual wondered about how to get eight individuals to move to the same beat. The athlete wanted to check what has been described as the ultimate workout. The romantic craved seeing if the quirkiness of the sport - there is after all, little practical value to oarsmanship in the postindustrial age - stirred his blood.

The greatest poet who ever wrote about rowing is Virgil, the greatest historian is Thucydides, but the greatest imagination ever to turn its attention to the sport is that of painter, Thomas Eakins.

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.

The oars game me power but also taught me humility.

The single sculler, alone on the river at dawn, or spotlighted in his lane during a race, is th emost romantic, the most quixotic figure in all rowing.

When you are on the erg your mind is too busy to pay attention to the sounds of the machine; you notice only that they are indeed loud.

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.