It’s the quintessential Greek sport: harmonious, competitive, agonizing, nautical, and above all, intelligent. It combines Odysseus’s brains and brawn and love of the sea with the tactical precision of the Spartan pikeman.
BARRY S. STRAUSSErgometer is Greek for ‘work meter’
More Barry S. Strauss Quotes
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Rowing was not simple for me. I nodded whenever the instructor made a point, as if I understood, but I could as easily have assembled the space shuttle as have repeated the moves she was explaining.
BARRY S. STRAUSS -
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.
BARRY S. STRAUSS -
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.
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When you are rowing well and hard, the rhythm of the stroke takes over. It drives your days and restores your nights. It imparts cadence and direction.
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The rower need to know technique and has to be in shape. He won’t wrong by using strategy.
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Here and there the dark brine gushed with foam, Roaring terribly through the strength of the mighty men.
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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.
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There is a place where cerebral an corporeal meet: they call it rowing
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As if you legs were two cannons and your arms were two oars and the great lateral muscles of your back were pterodactyl wings and the brim of your baseball cap was a harpoon.
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Rowing it was pointed out, was a sport that risked few injuries. So it was, I ould discover, but only if you did it right.
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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.
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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.
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The oars game me power but also taught me humility.
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So to the lyre of Orpheus they struck with their oars, The furious water of the sea, and the surge broke into waves.
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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.
BARRY S. STRAUSS