The Amateurs Read Online Free PDF

this, but he believed it nonetheless. He was also aware that one reason he had ended up in a single scull was that it was the only way he could get to stroke a boat.
    Probably the world of rowing was, to a great degree, genetically preselected. In countries such as East Germany, where sports fell under state control, authorities physiologically tested young rowers to see who should and who should not be encouraged. In America, fortunately, selection was less mechanical. Those who were good endurance athletes, whose lungs were unusually good at extracting oxygen from the air and whose tissues were replenished to a high degree during a race, usually liked the sport and did well at it. Those who were physiologically less suited never liked it, did not perform well and soon drifted away. (Gregg Stone, who had watched and rowed with Tiff Wood from the time they were in prep school to the time they were both singles champions, had thought that at first it was simply Wood's competitive drive that had made him successful. Later, as Stone learned more about the physiology of the sport, he was inclined to believe that Wood's triumphs were based on an intense competitive spirit combined with such a strong genetic base that Wood was able to waste immense amounts of energy with poor technique and still succeed.)
    Those who dominated in sculling were, said Fritz Hagerman, an Ohio University professor who specialized in testing athletes, such remarkable physical specimens as to be, in his words, almost physiological freaks. Their great ability was their capacity to take in oxygen at an astonishing rate, thus releasing the food inside them as energy. If the normal person could take in three liters of oxygen per minute, then a world-class rower such as Wood or Biglow could take in six liters per minute. This oxygen intake was the key to their power and placed them way above other athletes. Baseball players might consume about three liters; professional basketball players, playing a stop-and-start sport, might consume four. Six was virtually off the chart. Only bikers and cross-country skiers were close—indeed, in proportion to their body size they might take in a little bit more oxygen than rowers—but bikers and cross-country skiers were much smaller, and on a pure sampling, the rowers took in more oxygen.
    There are two ways for the body to produce energy, the aerobic and the anaerobic; the aerobic, by far the more efficient, is what sets rowers apart. The more oxygen that is available to the body, the more quickly the body can use its foodstuffs to produce energy. The energy thus produced is measured in kilocalories, one kilocalorie being necessary to raise one kilogram of water one degree Celsius. Someone brushing his teeth produces roughly one kilocalorie a minute; someone walking through a parking lot to a car uses about four to five; someone jogging at a slow pace produces about six to eight. A cross-country skier produces roughly thirty kilocalories per minute, but an Olympic-class rower produces thirty-six kilocalories a minute.
    If oxygen is the key to aerobic energy, anaerobic energy comes into play when less and less oxygen becomes available—but anaerobic energy is only one nineteenth as efficient, and it produces as by-products lactic acids, which cause immense pain. Thus at the end of a race, when a rower inevitably finds his normal supply of energy depleted, it is replaced by a source that is far less efficient and a good deal more painful.
    If Tiff Wood was the favorite for the single sculls, he did not feel like a favorite, nor was he sure he wanted to be one. He had, because of the harshness of the Cambridge winter, spent perilously little time on the water and even less time in racing, for it was one thing to practice and another thing to race. Whatever edge he might have over his chief challenger, Biglow, was negligible, and it was entirely possible that there was no edge at all. Harry Parker had warned Wood that being