RIO DE JANEIRO – Pain and suffering are part of the Olympic experience for many athletes; yet, the sport of rowing takes things to a new level. The ferocity of the exertion that rowers at the Games go through is such that they often suffer temporary blindness.
“One of the biggest misconceptions about rowing is that if you are good it looks very graceful and beautiful,” Katelin Snyder, coxswain for the United States women’s eight, told USA TODAY Sports. “But it is not, it is brutal. For the athletes it is absolute torture and hell.”
Part of the suffering involves strange physiological effects – including a loss of vision -- on the body, which screams in protest as the pain barrier is met, and defeated, in each and every Olympic race.
“Towards the end, everything starts to go a bit weird,” former British rower Matthew Pinsent, a four-time Olympic champion, told the BBC. “It all starts to go. Your senses are not in control anymore and they start to leave you. The hearing will go, the vision goes out of synch, there isn't much left.”
American Anders Weiss, competing in the men’s pairs competition alongside partner Nureg Guregian but eliminated from medal contention on Tuesday, pushed his body to its very limit just to qualify for the Olympics.
At the final U.S. trial at West Windsor, N.J., in June, Weiss produced a career-best effort to book a spot in Rio, but found himself in serious discomfort as a result. Toward the end of the race, just as Guregian was yelling for more effort, Weiss’ vision failed him.
“I knew I couldn’t stop even though I couldn’t see,” Weiss said. “We had both tried so hard and put in so much to get to that point.
“I had literally no control over my body. I couldn’t see at all, my body was completely spent.”
One of the reasons for the extreme effects is that the preferred tactics of rowing leave no room for steady pacing. The sport has been described as an “all-out sprint for six minutes,” meaning athletes must train for both endurance and speed.
The lactose kicks in early, the muscles begin to hurt, the chest starts to heave and it feels like sucking air through a straw.
“It is really about going out as hard as you can, just throwing the biggest punches you can throw and then just holding on for dear life at the end of the race,” American eights rower Austin Hack said. “”Our sport is one that rewards early efforts like that so then you need to trust in your physiology and your ability to kind of fight through the pain, to keep taking good strokes and to get yourself the result that you want.”
Despite the agonizing and frightening side effects, elite rowers say the exertion is all worth it.
“It’s not necessarily a bad thing,” U.S. women’s eight competitor Amanda Polk said, when asked about Weiss’ temporary blindness. “I think its more so that that person is willing to go beyond what they think they can do and their body might not accept it but their mind sometimes can overrule that.”
