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much, now admired him. Joe, he thought, had maximized both his physical and his mental abilities to an uncommon degree, thus permitting himself to compete against much bigger, stronger, more naturally gifted men. He had managed that not just because he understood the sport and his own abilities so completely but also because he understood the concept of relativity in competition. Joe did not go into an event hoping to set a record or to dominate others. Rather he shrewdly assessed his own strengths and limits as well as those of his main competitors and adjusted his race plans accordingly. (Tiff Wood tended to confirm Mike Bouscaren's judgment. Wood liked to row against Biglow because Biglow's races were so consistent. But he did not like to race against Bouscaren because the latter rowed a different race each time). To Mike Bouscaren, his younger brother had become an athlete of almost unbelievable mental toughness. He had no business competing in this world, and yet he was competing at the highest level. In 1983 the quality of his rowing had begun steadily improving, and there was a marked improvement in his endurance. In the last year Bouscaren had won three important races in which endurance was critical, the Head of the Schuylkill (2.75 miles), the Head of the Connecticut (3.5 miles) and the most prestigious of them, the Head of the Charles (three miles), where he had, to his absolute delight, edged out Tiff Wood. By all rights he should have been preparing himself for a team boat where his technical skill was badly needed. But he wanted to be the single sculler, and he was sure he was peaking just in time for the Olympics. In the early spring Mike Vespoli, who was helping the rowing association by checking on the sculling program, had called Bouscaren to find out how things were going. "Is there anything we could be doing that would make things better?" Vespoli asked.
    "Well, there could be a lot more work on the quad," Bouscaren answered. The year before, he had rowed on the national quad, which had taken seventh in the world. Rowing with him had been Charley Altekruse, Bill Purdy and Biglow. There was the possibility that with more experience it might become a more competitive boat.
    "Oh," said Vespoli, knowing exactly what he was doing, "are you willing to give up the single and row in the quad?"
    "Absolutely not," said Bouscaren.
     

CHAPTER
    SIX
    As Tiff Wood walked among the other young businessmen in Boston, he appeared to be just another modest young man in Ivy League clothes, the actuarial expert with a consulting firm that he in fact was. Despite his six-one height and his 185 pounds, he did not look tall and powerful as one might imagine a great oar. In his street clothes, he seemed almost slight of build. But there was no fat on him, he was all muscle. If the normal human body fat was somewhere around 18 percent, his level of fat varied between 7 and 8.5 percent (skater Eric Heiden's was 7 percent). Only in his rowing clothes did the power in his body show his enormously strong arms and his immensely thick and awesomely muscled legs. The power in them was unmistakable; and when John Biglow spoke of Tiff Wood and his ability, he spoke first of his legs. Tiff Wood, in classic terms of muscularity, was much stronger than John Biglow.
    In addition to his strength, Wood had an exceptional capacity to bear pain. Rowing, particularly single sculling, inflicts on the individual in every race a level of pain associated with few other sports. There was certainly pain in football during a head-on collision, pain in other sports on the occasion of a serious injury. That was more the threat of pain; in rowing there was the absolute guarantee of it every time. Pain in championship single-scull rowing is a given. Each race is like a sprint. But unlike a sprint, which usually lasts 10 or 20 or 45 seconds, a two-thousand-meter sculling championship lasts 7 minutes and is roughly the length of a two-mile run. The body quickly