The Boys in the Boat: Chapters 9-12

One of the first admonitions of a good rowing coach, after the fundamentals are over, is “pull your own weight,” and the young oarsman does just that when he finds out that the boat goes better when he does.

Instead of taking it relatively slow for the first few weeks of winter quarter, as they generally did, working on details of form and technique while waiting for the weather to improve, they were going to row all out every day, right from the outset this year, weather be damned. They were going to work themselves into top physical condition first and then worry about refining technique later.

The next morning the Seattle Post-Intelligencer exulted, “A New Era in Washington Rowing. Possible Entry in the Olympic Games in Berlin!”

All-out war promptly broke out in the shell house. The sullen rivalries that had arisen during the fall season now turned into outright battles. Eyes that had been coolly averted from one another before now locked in icy stares.

The following day they rowed awkwardly and lost badly. Ulbrickson promptly demoted them to third boat.

At the shell house, the crew boys stripped off their jerseys and stretched out on the ramp, basking like lithe, white lizards in the sun.

Each tried to outdo the other in gloomy prognostications for the upcoming regatta.

Ulbrickson announced that his boys were too heavy, badly out of shape as a result of all the canceled workouts in Seattle. He'd hoped but failed to “boil them down” to fighting trim by now. Rate them “for the dark horses that they are,” he said.

When asked why he’d showed up with a boatload of sophomores, Ulbrickson looked at the reporter balefully and said, “They’re the best we’ve got.”

The water itself was turgid, gray-green even on sunny days, oil slicked, and reeking of diesel fuel and seaweed.

Given this meager sports heritage, the Washington crews’ victories gave Seattleites something they hadn’t had in a long time—something, in fact, that they had never really had. With the sweep in California, recent victories in Poughkeepsie, and now talk even of future victories in the Olympics, any Seattleite could suddenly stick out his chest and crow a bit.

The psychology is complex. Even as rowers must subsume their often fierce sense of independence and self-reliance, at the same time they must hold true to their individuality, their unique capabilities as oarsmen or oarswomen or, for that matter, as human beings.

A crew composed entirely of eight amped-up, overtly aggressive oarsmen will often degenerate into a dysfunctional brawl in a boat or exhaust itself in the first leg of a long race.

For Joe and his crew mates, it was a terrible blow, but from Al Ulbrickson’s point of view, his new varsity’s eight-length margin of victory seemed to betoken good things to come in the climactic race on June 18.

Before leaving the press car, he dutifully congratulated Ky Ebright and then gamely fielded the barrage of questions leveled at him.

He drove eastward for miles on end, the road running relentlessly arrow straight, undulating over rolling jade-green fields of wheat.

Upstream a narrow suspension catwalk stretched fifteen hundred feet across the river, swaying slightly, like a cobweb in the evening breeze.

Somewhat more than six thousand fans packed into the Long Beach Marine Stadium on the day of the race, sitting in bleachers or standing on the sand along both sides of the arrow-straight saltwater course, a forest of oil derricks rising behind them.

Three times a day, and sometimes four on weekends, he ate in the large, white clapboard company mess hall in Mason City, the hastily erected town run by MWAK, the consortium of companies building the dam.

An inch shorter than Joe, and more slightly built, he was nevertheless a fine physical specimen and striking to look at, with fine, regular features; gracefully proportioned limbs; and an open, eager face. He had warm, inviting eyes and a sunny smile. If you’d wanted a poster model for the all-American boy, Johnny would have fit the bill. He was also a thoroughly nice kid and nearly as poor as Joe Rantz.

His eyes could be mirthful one moment, flashing with rage the next. The overall effect was slightly pugnacious.

At any given moment, though, he was as likely to be merry as ornery. He loved to play tricks, delighted in horsing around, always seemed to have a joke at the ready.

The work was crushingly hard, the sun brutal, the dirt and ceaseless din almost unbearable, but the spaces were vast, the scenery staggering, and the company fast and fascinating.

A hockey stadium, a swimming stadium, an equestrian stadium, an enormous and monolithic exhibition hall, a gymnasium, a Greek amphitheater, tennis courts, restaurants, and sprawling administrative buildings were all in various stages of completion.

The gist of it was a simple, bold assertion—the University of Washington’s eight-oared crew was going to win gold at the Berlin Olympics in 1936.

Ulbrickson had been studying Joe for a year now, ever since Tom Bolles had first warned him that the boy was touchy and uneven, that there were days when he could row like quicksilver—so smooth and fluid and powerful that he seemed a part of the boat and his oar and the water all at once—and days when he was downright lousy.

Pocock started off by explaining the various tools he used. He showed Joe wood planes, their wooden handles burnished by decades of use, their blades so sharp and precise they could shave off curls of wood as thin and transparent as tissue paper. He handed him different old rasps and augers and chisels and files and mallets he’d brought over from England.

By omission, any national not of “German or related blood” was thereby relegated to the status of a subject of the state.

The large Jewish Helvetia Rowing Club had already been banned outright in 1933.

But Pocock persisted, gently and deftly probing him about his family, about where he’d come from and where he hoped to go.

And the ruminations that Ulbrickson had given the matter in September seemed to pay dividends right from the start.

He missed the easy if largely wordless comradeship he’d had with gruff, sardonic old Roger Morris right from the first day of freshman turnout.

There the crowd—mostly concerned Jews, labor leaders, university professors, and Catholics—had listened to more than twenty speakers detailing what was happening in Germany, how the Nazis were concealing it, and why it would be unconscionable for the United States to participate in the games.

Brundage believed strongly in the Olympic spirit, and particularly in the principle that politics should play no role in sports. He argued, reasonably, that it would be unfair to American athletes to let German politics deprive them of their chance to compete on a world stage.

It was Brundage himself, however, who came up with perhaps the most twisted bit of logic to advance the antiboycott cause: “The sportsmen of this country will not tolerate the use of clean American sport as a vehicle to transplant Old World hatreds to the United States.”