The Amateurs (13 page)

Brad Lewis's home life had not been an easy one. His mother had been very sick when he was young, and he was raised largely by his father. Out of that, his friends thought, came a certain edginess and defensiveness. Brad was highly sensitive to slights and oddly insensitive to what he did to others. His behavior with others was unusually provocative. By being rude to his colleagues, by alienating them and turning them against him, he was creating the self-fulfilling prophecy he wanted—that he was largely alone against the world. He acted as though someone were going to take advantage of him unless he took advantage first. He had a strong sense of grievance and disliked being beholden to anyone. "I hate," he once told a friend, "having to ask for things, having to say please to people and having to say thank you." It was not easy to be his friend or, for that matter, even his teammate.

A year earlier, when he had made the national team in the double, his partner, Paul Enquist, had found sustaining the friendship required for a double to be one of the hardest things he had ever done. There had been long periods when Lewis barely spoke to Enquist, and sometimes Brad treated him as if he were an opponent, not a teammate.

On this weekend Lewis saw himself as a warrior, stalking the enemy. The enemy were Tiff Wood (whom, almost alone among the scullers, he actually liked) and then Bouscaren and possibly Biglow as well. Lewis knew that the Easterners did not think of him as a peer, but that did not bother him. He was convinced that his picture and a feature article about him would never grace the pages of
The Oarsman
(or as it was now called,
Rowing USA),
the publication of the U.S. Rowing Association. That feeling was shared by many West Coast oarsmen, a belief that in a sport where there was little outside public attention they failed to get even peer recognition.

In Lewis's formative years in sculling, the other oarsmen had been Easterners; they had gone to school with each other, they had their own network and they put each other up during regattas. He had been the outsider. He was young, he did not have a lot of money and his manners were almost deliberately rough. They had complained that, if he came and stayed with you, he stayed too long and did not readily contribute for the food. They had called him "America's Guest." It was not that others were probably any less self-obsessed; it was only that they were better at disguising it. Lewis was aware that social situations were not easy for him; and as far as he was concerned, the smaller the group the better. With six other people he became eerily silent, retreating into himself and making the rest uneasy. To his peers, he seemed not just different but even defiant and on occasion boastful. In 1983, when he had come back to Boston to prepare for the single-scull trials, he kept telling people he was going to win. It was possible that this might happen, but in the code of rowing, one did not go around saying it would. It was considered bad form, particularly since, as it happened, he did not win. A year later, at the sculling camp, John Biglow was talking with Lewis and mentioned the boast of the previous year and how it had grated on the other oarsmen. For a while Lewis did not say anything, but 10 minutes later he came over to Biglow, quite surprised, and asked, "Did that really bother you?"

It had been Lewis's own way of psyching himself to take on the dreaded Easterners. Despite the eastern snobbery toward California oarsmen, he thought that Californians had a genuine advantage over the Easterners. Californians could row all year, while the Easterners lost four or five months to the weather. The erg, the weight room and the tank might be acceptable substitutes for rowing, but nothing was better for oarsmen, he believed, than real rowing on real water. He was sure that in the past year he had rowed twice as many miles as anyone else in the country. But even then he felt very much alone. As he worked out in Newport, supported only by himself and his father, he became increasingly suspicious of traditional coaching. As he improved and coaches who had once, in his mind, scorned him now began to show some interest, he approached them warily. In truth, he trusted only himself, his father and very few others in the world of rowing. He had, in fact, wanted, at one of the pre-Olympic races, to put a bumper sticker on his boat that said, "Question Authority." He had been told that was not acceptable. The bumper sticker was gone, but the attitude remained.

On this weekend he was tracking TiffTiff Wood. He thought about Tiff all the time, what a strong racer and how mentally tough he was. Earlier in the year, Lewis had been finishing a workout in Newport Bay when a member of the harbor patrol who was his friend had signaled to him and he had rowed over. The patrolman had a copy of
Ultrasport,
a magazine devoted to athletes such as rowers and runners who pushed their bodies to the ultimate limit. "You see this?" the friend had asked. It was a huge takeout on Tiff Wood, and it told how well he was rowing. When Lewis finished reading the article, he turned around and rowed, ten more miles that day.

The previous Christmas, Tiff had come out to Newport to row in the Christmas regatta, an 850-meter sprint. For Lewis it was an important test because Wood was the reigning champion, he had blazing speed and it was almost impossible to beat him in a sprint. Wood had beaten Lewis by a fraction, but Lewis had been encouraged. In his mind that close a finish meant he was on schedule, and he had the rest of the winter and spring to work out on real water.

He had several standards by which to measure his improvement. One was his clockings as he rowed every day around Lido Island in Newport Bay. These he called Lidos. His times for a Lido, which was
2
^1/2
miles, and for a Double Lido, which was five miles, had come down steadily in the past year. The water was remarkably calm, so the times were meaningful. The other measurement was how well he did in workouts against Hans Svensson, a Swedish sculler who had been fifth at the 1980 Olympics.

Svensson was a huge man and an accomplished sculler. In the fall of 1980, he had come to Southern California to escape the Swedish winter, and he and Lewis had worked out together. Svensson had absolutely dominated the American. In 1981, Svensson had returned. Though he still regularly beat Lewis, their races were a good deal closer, and Lewis could sometimes actually see the puddles from Svensson's oars. They were also becoming friends. Svensson had on occasion stayed with the Lewis family in Corona del Mar, a Newport Beach suburb, and Lewis had visited Svensson in Sweden (where he proved, by Svensson's account, a somewhat imperfect guest, complaining about the food and demanding, as a good Southern California boy should, an avocado; when Mrs. Svensson had found one, unlikely though that was in Sweden, he spit it out because it was served unripe).

The workouts had helped Lewis. Unlike most Americans, who eased into their workouts, Svensson worked hard from the moment his boat was on the water. He would take thirty strokes to limber up and then go all out. He did not coast or pace himself. In 1982, Lewis had beaten Svensson, for the first time, in the Christmas regatta. Generally, though, Svensson was still the winner over longer distances. Then in the fall of 1983—the perfect time for Lewis, who was preparing for the 1984 Olympic trials—he started beating Svensson regularly. The victories were sure signs to him that he had reached world-class status. The pieces had finally come together.

Tiff Wood thought that Brad Lewis was a fascinating man. For Brad, rowing was not just the critical experience, it was the
only
experience. Wood believed that because Lewis had no life other than rowing, any setback in rowing was doubly bitter for him, just as any victory was doubly exhilarating. Lewis largely agreed. He could not think of himself in any other terms than as a rower. It was not that he had a few lesser priorities; he had
no
other priorities. He judged a given day by how much it had helped his rowing.

He was twenty-nine in the summer of 1984, and any jobs he had held after college had lasted only long enough to let him earn the money that would permit him to continue rowing. He lived at home, and his father had helped support him. He had worked principally as a rough framer, building the outside of houses. In three or four months, he could make $6,000 or $7,000. That was the amount he needed for his sculling, for boats, for travel and meals. He owned four sculls, each worth $3,000 or $4,000. Some of the other scullers made fun of his penchant for equipment, but he liked keeping abreast of developments in boats and did not think four of them too heavy a commitment. For the past two years he had taken a job with the Wells Fargo bank under the Olympic Job Opportunity program, which allowed him to spend almost all his time rowing. He knew that the single-mindedness of his life, how little he gave to anything and anyone else, made him a selfish person, but until he achieved his goals, that was the way it was going to have to be.

Rowing was the only positive channel for the aggression and rebellion in him. He was willing to work very hard for something he wanted, but only on his own terms. Even in Little League baseball, there had been a constant series of conflicts with his coaches. In high school he might have played a variety of sports, but he had been wary of the ones where the coaches were always giving orders. He had tried basketball as a freshman but found the program filled with Mickey Mouse rules. He was not on the starting team, and the coach had a rule that none of the substitutes could sit down during practice. At one practice Lewis and another sub were sitting down. The coach looked over. "What are you two guys doing?" he asked. "Tell him," whispered the other boy, "that we're practicing for the next game." "We're getting ready for the next game," Lewis had said. That was his last basketball practice.

The rowing program, by contrast, had been relatively relaxed, and soon it had become a haven for some of the school's most talented but dissident athletes. Brad Lewis believed that he, not the coach, should supply the discipline.

Lewis was supposed to go to Orange Coast College, but before he even entered the school he decided he was being put down by a coach. He had tried rowing a single the summer before college to be in top condition. When the freshman coach had spied him at the dock and asked him what he was doing, Lewis had explained that he was training to make the junior-varsity boat as a freshman. "There's no way you're going to do that," the coach had said. "Well, I'd like to try, anyway," Lewis had said. "There's no way," the coach had said. "Just forget it." With that, Lewis had put the shell away and immediately transferred to Cal Irvine. An era of good crews at Irvine was ending just as he arrived, and by his senior year he was convinced that there was simply not enough material for an outstanding eight. He suggested to the coach that instead of putting together an eight they concentrate on racing a four, where they could be competitive. That idea was not accepted. Because he was tired of losing in races where he did not have a chance, he quit and spent the rest of the year playing volleyball.

Bob Ernst, who had recruited him for Cal Irvine and who was his first coach there, had taken Brad Lewis's measure immediately and had decided that he was someone who was always going to be more interested in individual than in team sports. His goals would always be personal. There was with him from the start, Ernst sensed, a wariness that participating with others might dilute his own excellence. Ernst realized that Lewis was an unusual athlete, one who would train at a very high level and who brought a high degree of intelligence to everything he did; no one would read more about sports and about training, and no one would work harder once he made up his mind about a regimen. But he was also remarkably immune to most of the forces that motivated college athletes. If a teammate started talking before a regatta about what they needed to do, trying to motivate the others, Lewis's withdrawal was self-evident. He seemed to disappear from the room. Yet Ernst also knew that if he pushed Brad in a way Brad did not want to be pushed, there would not be a confrontation. Rather, he would walk away and never show up again. That made it very hard on many of his teammates.

Bruce Ibbetson, who rowed and who fought and argued with Lewis during their college years, thought him consummately selfish. The team-oriented Ibbetson could never understand Lewis's more egocentric vision. One source of friction between them was Lewis's willingness to do only what interested him. That did not include much of the menial work involved in rowing, such as taking care of the boats and the boathouse. Lewis was also different from other superior rowers Ibbetson had known in the way in which he chose which days he felt like working hard and which days he did not. On days when he did not want to work hard, he would coast through a piece ("flick it in," the rowers called it). At other times, he might quietly work out alone, build himself up to a certain level; and only when he was sure he could win a practice piece, would he row hard in practice against another sculler. Lewis did not so much compete against the other rower as attack him with a special violence. To Ibbetson that was predatory behavior of the worst kind.

In 1980, he had turned on Lewis all the resentment built up in past years and told him, "You're a shark, nothing but a goddamn shark." The remark did not bother Lewis. It might be that Ibbetson was right. Years later, when Lewis arrived for the single trials in Princeton, he had taped a small rubber shark to his riggings. If his teammates were always wondering why he wasn't like the rest of them, the answers were first that he couldn't be and second that he didn't want to be. Ernst, more aware of that than anyone else was, knew the perfect aspect of rowing for Brad. In Lewis's freshman year, Ernst had started him in a single scull. He had loved it from the start; he was on his own, with no laws or commands to obey save his own.