Best 35 quotes in «rowing quotes» category

In crew, contempt is important. In Boston, Boston University and Northeastern crew are treated with contempt by the college up the river. Intramural crew is treated with contempt. Nonathletic coxswains (Chinese engineering majors, poets) are treated with contempt. A true coxswain is a diminutive jock, raging against the pint size that made him the butt of so many jokes at Prep school. He runs twenty stadiums a day, his girlfriend is six feet one, and he can scream orders even when he has the flu (which he catches at least three times a winter).

Then the coxswain called out, 'Ready all!' Joe turned and faced the rear of the boat, slid his seat forward, sank the white blade of his oar into the oil-black water, tensed his muscles, and waited for the command that would propel him forward into the glimmering darkness.

I stopped rowing for a moment to glug down some water, but it was warm, tasted of plastic, and failed to refresh. I yearned for an ice-cold drink—preferably one with bubbles and alcohol in it.

The Head of the Charles in Cambridge, Mass., is the great American crew event, athletically and socially. It occurs the second weekend in October; secondary schools and colleges send shells in all categories in the three-mile race up the Charles River. Drunken Preps line the banks and bridges at Harvard, ready to howl with glee as a coxswain rams his shell into a stanchion of the Eliot Street Bridge (where the river narrows and curves with treacherous suddenness).

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.

Follow the stroke - or be the stroke that the rest can follow.

Anyone who has not rowed in a really close Boat Race cannot comprehend the level of the pain.

Don't blow your load on the first stroke, fellas.

Now, in my middle age, about nineteen in the head I'd say, I am rowing, I am rowing.

For a thorough understanding of rowing, for the what, the how and the why, the books making up Peter Mallory’s The Sport of Rowing certainly do it all.

Go out there and thrill me.

I climbed on the rowing ergometer, and started to pull - losing myself in the rhythm of sweat and pain.

Internally, you experience rowing as a graphic microcosm of life - solitude, learning, work, rest, nourishment, sharing and ultimately challenge.

My two major faults are that I row too long and pick up too many women

Once one is beyond a certain level of commitment to the sport, life begins to seem an allegory of rowing rather than rowing an allegory of life.

I train very hard, either rowing on the cross trainer or running. Not only do you feel tired afterwards but it relaxes you, it completely clears the head. But to sort things out I also like to walk.

Race for the pschological advantage. Sit up tall, pull in high, stay within the margins of power, and they will inevitably look over at some point to see what kind of God is blasting your boat forward.

Rowing against the tide is hard and uncertain. To go with the tide and thus take advantage of the workings of the great natural force is safe and easy.

Racing shirts should be sold on big, thick rolls like paper towels.

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.

The ergometer simulates the physical demands of rowing, packaging the pains with none of the amenities that make it worthwhile.

The concentration of all seven behind the stroke should be so strong that you know by feel when that stroke has varied his style or rating without the cox announcing it.

Rowing is a sport for dreamers. As long as you put in the work, you can own the dream.

The oars game me power but also taught me humility.

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.

The ship is going by a mighty engine, and you are busy rowing.

When a politician states that we are all in the same boat, be on Your guard. Does it mean that YOU are supposed to be doing all the rowing?

When one rows it is not the rowing which moves the ship: rowing is only a magical ceremony by means of which one compels a demon to move the ship.

A good shell has to have life and resiliency to get in harmony with the swing of the crew.

The GLORY is in the TEAM, NOT the INDIVIDUAL.

Virtue dwells at the head of a river, to which we cannot get but by rowing against the stream.

And so in time the rowboat and I became one and the same-like the archer and his bow or the artist and his paint. What I learned wasn't mastery over the elements; it was mastery over myself, which is what conquest is ultimately all about.

But the greatest paradox of the sport has to do with the psychological makeup of the people who pull the oars. Great oarsmen and oarswomen are necessarily made of conflicting stuff—of oil and water, fire and earth. On the one hand, they must possess enormous self-confidence, strong egos, and titanic willpower. They must be almost immune to frustration. Nobody who does not believe deeply in himself or herself—in his or her ability to endure hardship and to prevail over adversity—is likely even to attempt something as audacious as competitive rowing at the highest levels. The sport offers so many opportunities for suffering and so few opportunities for glory that only the most tenaciously self-reliant and self-motivated are likely to succeed at it. And yet, at the same time—and this is key—no other sport demands and rewards the complete abandonment of the self the way that rowing does. Great crews may have men or women of exceptional talent or strength; they may have outstanding coxswains or stroke oars or bowmen; but they have no stars. The team effort—the perfectly synchronized flow of muscle, oars, boat, and water; the single, whole, unified, and beautiful symphony that a crew in motion becomes—is all that matters. Not the individual, not the self.

If you are the only one who's rowing in the boat, you have no right to complain about which way you are heading!

I’d say it was a pleasure rowing with you, only it wasn’t.