“What we’re trying to do here, and what so many clubs are doing around the country, is trying to create programmes and opportunities for people to row,” said USRowing chief executive Amanda Kraus.
TBITB is about a group of poor students at the University of Washington who try out for the junior varsity crew team. It’s 1936, and far from seeking Olympic glory, these guys are simply trying to find a way to make a buck.
“All you gotta do is make the team,” one of them says. “How hard can that be?”
Plenty hard, it turns out, and what ensues is the Miracle on Ice, except on water. And with one other notable difference — most of those hockey kids always knew where their next meal was coming from.
Certainly there are others out there in a country of 330 million looking for a fresh start, a taste of the great outdoors and a chance to try something new.
Kraus believes her sport might be that thing — and that all those potential rowers don’t have to be daughters and sons of millionaires.
Rowing is hoping to inspire more people like Arshay Cooper, who was a member of the first all-Black high school rowing team at Manley High School in Chicago. Cooper authored a book, A Most Beautiful Thing, that itself was made into a movie produced by basketball stars Grant Hill and Dwyane Wade.
“In rowing, you move forward by looking in the opposite direction,” is a quote from Cooper on his website that describes his world view.
“I learned that it’s OK to look back, as long as you keep pushing forward.”
The sport also hopes to build more programmes, such as Learn to Row Day, when rowing clubs are urged to welcome newcomers and teach them about the sport.
So much about rowing is a steep climb. Kraus says it costs around $50,000 a year to support a Team USA rower. That comes after the tens of thousands expended on their development at the grassroots and college levels. But, she says, building a pipeline is an investment worth making, and it doesn’t mean everyone has to end up at the Olympics.
“We hope people can get inspired to really check the sport out for themselves,” Kraus said. “You can be 30 or 40 or 70 and go do a ‘Learn to Row’ course at your local club. ”
At the 1936 Berlin Games, Nazi flags get better placement than the Olympic rings and Adolf Hitler is a constantly glowering presence.
Nobody, however, poses a bigger threat to the boys from Washington than the leader of America’s Olympic committee, who appears unbothered as he tells their coach that, even though they won their era’s version of the Olympic trials, a team with a better pedigree and more money will take their place in Berlin unless they raise $5000 in a week.
It’s an absurd and unfair insult, and one that, sadly, isn’t that far removed from today’s realities: Politics rule.
And even in a billion-dollar Olympics industry, so many athletes have to scratch for pennies, especially in America, where the government doesn’t pay for anything. — AP
