If anyone here is secretly dreaming of making the Olympics, I can tell you exactly how to do it, two words: Sustained Obsession. The obsession isn't so hard. But keeping it sustained is a tough nut to crack. A heart-felt enemy can go a long way to sustaining your obsession. Love your enemy.

White Hot Concentration is the unappreciated fruit of hard ligting, especially squats. When your in the squat rack, with a serious amount of weight overhead, your life literally depends on maintaining concentration. You learn to block out the swirling images in the mirror, the obnoxious chatter of the people next to you, the fat drop of sweat running down your nose. Once you've mastered this concentration in the weight room, duplicating it on the race course is relatively easy. Champions have only a few things in common. One weapon they all possess is White Hot Concentration.

Nobody Beats Us! served as our main trigger... We practiced using trigger words, private verbal keys, which unlocked certain thoughts for us. We had a half-dozen phrases-some dealt with maintaining our technique, two dealt with maintaining our technique, two dealt with our stroke rating. The most powerful phrase was 'Nobody Beats Us!' According to our plan, when I said these words to Paul toward the end of the race, we would immediately shift into our final sprint, rowing as high and hard as possible, straight through, until we crossed the finish line.

One training device is the ergometer. I never owned one, never trained on one, and practically never used one. The few national team tests I took on ergs were dismal failures, which worked wonders to further my dislike of these beastly creatures. Boring. Tedious. Noisy. Ergs have greatly cheapened rowing. Graceless. Greasy. Grim. The erg is to rowing what having sex by yourself is to having sex. Stop it!

Big guys like you and me aren't allowed to whine.

Rowing is such a fine sport. Everyone goes backward, and the leader can see his opponents as they struggle in vain.

I never realized how many holidays encroached on the collegiate training schedule. When I was training for the Olympics, only one holiday interested me, the Day After the Games.