When I was 11 my dad was a member of the U.S. Olympic Rowing Team that went to the games in Seoul. He’d been a coach my whole life. But this was really the first time I remember that being a big deal. He wrote a weekly correspondence column in the local newspaper about his experience at the games. My friend’s dads asked me all sorts of questions about it. I saw him march into the stadium on national TV. My first experience of my dad being something other than just my dad was the Olympics. It was pretty cool.
He’d go on to have a long and successful collegiate coaching career, retiring just a few years ago. But the Olympics were always part of our family culture. I grew up around Olympic sports and Olympic athletes. I rowed against them. I even beat a few on their bad days. The point is that I saw the Olympics and Olympic athletes up close in a way that made it something different than the cultural entertainment phenomenon that falls out of our televisions every four years. And there’s a thought on the contrast worth sharing. What gets lost in all of the pageantry and human interest of the media product that is the Olympics is the point of Olympic competition. It’s a point not lost on many of the athletes. The point is winning.
When I was in high school working my way into the first boat for one of the best high school rowing programs in the country, my dad introduced me to a guy named Brad Lewis. Lewis was an Olympic rower who won gold at the ‘84 games in Los Angeles. He’d just written a book on his experience called Assault on Lake Casitas. My dad wanted me to read it. And he wanted me to meet him. Because there was something in the heart of that book that he thought would never leave me. And he was right. It never has.
The story, much like what we try to turn the Olympics into today, starts as a human interest story. Lewis and his partner Paul Enquist had to fight their way onto the team after being politically ostracized by the coach. The odds were stacked against them and they refused to be told they couldn’t compete. And compete they did. They fought their way into the team and all the way to Los Angeles. If it ended there, it was a hell of a book. But it didn’t end there. And it wasn’t just a hell of a book. Because they didn’t just compete. They didn’t just get to be a part of the big happy party where everyone is a winner for being there. They competed. And they won the whole damned thing. The story isn’t about politics or acceptance or feeling good about yourself no matter what. It wasn’t about being a winner. It was about winning.
Now…about rowing…because there’s some part of this true about most Olympic sports and there’s something about the pain and commitment to all of it that matters.
These words had to get written down by me somewhere. And this is as good a place as any. Rowing is a racing sport that puts your body in anaerobic debt for just about as long as the human body can take it. It’s a simple sport. You repeat the same action over and over and over again while your body eats itself. It’s a personal war on entropy. It lasts around six minutes. If you stave off that entropy more effectively than your opponent, you win. If you don’t, you experience every bit of physical pain and add the pain of losing. It’s not fun. It doesn’t feel good. It hurts. And the only point is to compete and beat other rowers. To make them feel the pain of defeat.
Now back to Lewis and his Assault on Lake Casitas. Somewhere past the halfway point of races, Lewis would shout to his partner three words that triggered their mad dash to the end:
Nobody beats us…
For thirty years those words have rattled around in my head. Not it’s an honor to compete. Or I’m just happy to be here. Nobody beats us. John Ismay, a classmate of mine at Navy, a fellow rower and vet who now writes for the Times poked me on via Twitter today to see if I remembered. Of course I did.
Nobody beats us…
There’s a scene in the movie Miracle where U.S. Olympic Hockey Coach Herb Brooks (played by Kurt Russel) wanders into the Russian team walking in a single file line through the Olympic Village. They’re disciplined. They’re serious and physically imposing. But Brooks sees something else. He sees opportunity.
“Somebody’s gonna beat those guys.”
The thought that hangs in the air that you can see in Russel’s (Brooks) eyes is that it’s going to be him. Books have been written around the narrative that the Miracle on Ice can spin. But I know the truth. Herb Brooks and his team of American kids kicked the Soviet Union's ass in hockey. They didn’t win anything else. And that was enough.
The Olympics are on. I know cutthroat competition is out of style. And human interest stories make us feel more about the people in these games. And narratives fill the space between events. But I’ve seen it up close. And every one of those athletes has ripped out the souls and trampled on the dreams of their opponents to get there. And they mean to do it again.
Long live competition. Long live winning. Long live the uniquely human phenomenon of sport. We don’t need to add any more flesh and blood than what it is at its core.
Nobody beats us.
Related…kicking someone’s ass in hockey doesn’t mean you endorse their human rights agenda, foreign policy or political system any more than it did 42 years ago. I don’t know anyone associated with the 1980 Olympics that is glad we sat out those Summer Games. Nothing quite cancels someone like looking down on them from the podium…
That's so interesting about your dad! Thanks for sharing. I was in college during the 1980 Olympics, at a keg party watching that game. What a thrilling feeling! And everybody likes winning, whether they admit it or not.
Great reminder. (also - will you be uploading your Chartwell West posts into this blog's archives? I see the Chartwellwest site is down and I often refer those articles to people). Thanks!