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. STRAUSSRowing it was pointed out, was a sport that risked few injuries. So it was, I ould discover, but only if you did it right.
More Barry S. Strauss Quotes
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There’s a word for what that takes and the word is not magic, the word is guts.
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Ergometer is Greek for ‘work meter’
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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.
BARRY S. STRAUSS -
Yet what it takes to win races is the ability to reach inside and pull out something to keep you going – no, to go faster – when you have nothing left to give.
BARRY S. STRAUSS -
A boat is the hardest think I know of to put into perspective. It is so much like a human figure, there is something alive about it.
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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.
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 -
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 feel of a good row stays with you hours afterward. Your muscles glow, your mind wanders from the papers on you desk and goes back, again and again, to that terrific power piece at the end of the workout when it felt as if you and the boat were flying.
BARRY S. STRAUSS -
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.
BARRY S. STRAUSS -
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.
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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.
BARRY S. STRAUSS -
Eakins rejected gentlemen athletics as his theme. Instead, he took a subject that had been the stuff of illustrated weeklies and the penny press and turned it into fine art. Eakins celebrates not fire from heaven but honest sweat, not genius but hard work.
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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 romantic craved seeing if the quirkiness of the sport – there is after all, little practical value to oarsmanship in the postindustrial age – stirred his blood.
BARRY S. STRAUSS