This is what it feels like to lose.
Alistair Potts
Grey drizzle turns gives the hard in Putney a certain sheen marred by the
crud the Thames washes up every tide. I'm buzzing, I'm back with my boys,
it's ten years to the day since we won here and we've met up, had a swift
drink and been out in a launch to watch our current boat. Right now we're
mingling on the hard, joking, reminiscing, laughing. Now and then I catch
myself winding it down: the big boys here too, the current ones, do they
even want us here? I know the answer. But we're not so old that we're going
to get in the way, do anything stupid. We remember. We keep a respectful
distance.
And now I'm up in the changing room grabbing my stuff. Still the same, same
beige tiles, white paint peeling a bit, notice-board with school stuff
pinned up, lockers, smell of sweat and disinfectant and shower. Sogging,
stinky lycras spread everywhere like a laundry. Exactly the same. Happily
familiar. The boys are here too. They'll think it would have been different
ten years before: that's half their life; I know because I did. 1988 is
still prehistory to me. But what I now know is that, for them, the next ten
will pass before they've even realised they can never be this good again,
that in ten years they'll too be back here like us, and like us thinking
nothing much has changed. I nod a greeting at one or two who look up. Maybe
there's half a drop of faint recognition; maybe I'm just hoping there is.
There's nothing to say anyway. I'm in and out, grab my bag; I want to get
out. I'm having fun; it's no fun here, just the brooding foreboding weight
of what's coming in twenty-four hours.
I walk out of the changing rooms, through the boat house lobby where
tomorrow all the Cambridge parents will be; someone's putting out flowers,
polishing the floor, making it look good. There's a big tv hung up from the
ceiling in one corner. They'll come, suited, popping with pride, the
smalltalk polished by a decade and more of parents'-days; and here they'll
watch their boys win or lose. No, let me tell you now: they'll watch their
boys lose. Some will have come half way round the world, and with strangers
now friends tomorrow they'll watch their boys four miles away twisted in the
grip of distress, a pain that mum and dad will feel too. The rowers won't
know that, but I know that because now I'm a parent too. This place is going
to be horrible.
But right now that in the future and I'm walking out to meet up again with
my boys downstairs on the hard and remind ourselves how good we were. And
just as I'm coming out Dowbiggin's coming in. I know her - she's the cox, so
it's my business to know. I know her to say hello to. I think, suddenly I'm
not sure. But I say hello anyway, awkwardly, because I'm fully aware that I
haven't got anything useful to say. And I know that if you're a Blue and you
meet the Blue Boat cox the day before the race, you'd better have something
smarter than "good luck" up your sleeve. I don't though, and I know it. I
settle for "all set for tomorrow?". She stops. She nods. Yes. And smiles. Is
she waiting for some words of wisdom? Is she just being polite? I have no
idea. "You guys looked good out there" is my next
statement-of-the-frickin-idiotic. Yes, she says again. She's not wondering
off, that's bad. Because now I think she doesn't know who I am at all and
maybe she thinks I'm some nutter and is humouring me until her giant mates
appear. I'm going to wrap this up. "Well good luck tomorrow." Oh that was
good well done, you really helped her there, she'll be singing your praises.
I basically run away. She's still looking at me with what I hope is
amusement.
So I'm now back outside on the hard, and gathering my boys for an assault on
the Duke's Head. The veterans' race is just setting off: the television is
using it as a practice-run for their commentators tomorrow. And because for
the Boat Race they broadcast the sound and pictures to the crowds at Putney,
I can hear Tim Foster in his slightly gay voice saying "Cambridge having a
good start, cox Rebecca Dowbiggin urging her crew on." For a moment I'm
completely flummoxed - who the fuck was it that I was just talking to? Oh
okay I get it, they're practising using tomorrow's crew names too. I glance
back up at the boat house. Dowbiggin has come out to watch, she's leaning on
the balcony-railing at the top of the stairs watching the vets pass by. And
as I look I don't see her at all.
I see me.
I wasn't expecting that. I see me, through her, and for a few moments I'm
properly back again, back ten years. It's nothing so obvious as anticipation
or nerves or excitement. That's what you were thinking, but that's not it.
It's power. It's knowing you're really really good at what you do, you've
got eight world class athletes at your command. You've been chosen for the
most demanding task in world rowing. And look, everything here, the police,
the press, the tv, the radio, the coaches, the physios, the whole thing is
about you.
I turn away quickly before I turn back into a girl.
- Sunday August 29th 1999. St Catherine's Canada. World Championships.
I'm sitting alone on the medal dock with our boat, ordered not to let it
drift away. My feet drop into the hole in the bows where I normally lie, I
stare miserably across the lake with the grandstand to my back, my fresh
unwanted silver medal dangling over my thighs. Briefly I've lost my crew,
which is a relief: they're similarly distressed. Unbidden, unexpected, tears
start pouring down my face, splotting my brand-new lycra. It's the first
time I've cried since I was a child.
That six minutes will chew me up every day for six or seven years, sometimes
more, sometimes less, but never far away.
- Sunday March 29th 2009 Putney
1.45pm. I meet Quarrell who I've known longer than almost anyone else in
rowing. She's seen today's piece in the Times about my Boat Race crew and
says she didn't know that I held the record for the women's race and the
Goldie-Isis race as well as the Boat Race and I tell her that in the end it
comes down to luck: who you row with, who's rowing for the other side, what
the weather's doing. She laughs and tells me that I'm not as arrogant as I
used to be (except she used a kinder word than that, but that's what she
meant) but what she doesn't know is that I don't believe a word of it. I
just say that to Oxford people to make them think I'm a more rounded person
than I actually am. Although, now I think about it, she probably knew that
too. I tell her I think we can win. She's confident that Oxford is faster.
That's bad.
4.10pm. I'm in Mortlake now and probably Oxford are receiving their trophy.
I'm only a few metres away but I miss it all. I won't recall seeing anyone
from Oxford at all. I'm on the shingle where the crews have climbed out,
shielded from the crowds. Around me are some of our boys, some slumped, some
walking shakily, all shrouded in the utter misery of defeat. They must have
done the non-medal thing, now they're just spare, waiting for someone to
take them back to Putney. One's weeping. I feel bad for just noticing. I
want to leave, head back on the launch I came on. There's nothing for me
here.
(Later that day I'm with Vian, the girl who coxed the winning boat in 1999,
and we see Helen who has coxed Goldie today and got smacked by four lengths.
Poor Helen opens up to Vian. Afterwards I say to Vian that I don't know how
she does that, how she knows what to say, and she says that actually she
hardly said anything at all, she just listened. Apparently that's where I'm
going wrong. I think that's good advice, but I'm not sure about it being
easy. I'm scared of defeat and scared of the defeated and look at them like
they've got leprosy. Not a great look. )
So anyway back in Mortlake it's Dowbiggin walking towards me, purposefully;
I know that face. It's the face my four year old boy has when he falls out
of a tree, the one before the tears: it's shock, fear, disbelief, innocence.
Her cox's voice bears a gentle hoarseness. "Alistair, we were way over on
the right, weren't we? way over, weren't we?" She's right, but it hardly
matters. I know what's happening, her brain's trying to make sense of her
race but she can't, not so soon; it happens whether you win or lose. You try
to remember, but so soon you just get images, emotions, jumbled - I've been
there, gushing incoherence before someone told me to stop. It's much worse
when you've lost: every time you let yourself think you feel it coming back,
rushing back, the enormity of the pain that's about to hit you. So you focus
hard on one thing to try and stop what you know you can't, and here's
Dowbiggin and she keeps imploring: we were way over. And I'm trying to think
of the right thing to say, I can't say "so what", so I say "sweetheart, try
not to think about it" which is right and wrong and for a second she looks
at me, inscrutable now: I have no idea what she's thinking. I hope it's
nothing to do with leprosy, anyway. And then a journalist appears from
no-where and sticks his microphone in her face. "So now it's over what are
you going to do now?" he says and I know the answer to that one too. Because
when you've focussed on one day, one race, for so long, so hard you won't
have thought about the future at all. For such a long time nothing beyond
this moment has mattered. It's really not an exaggeration, and it catches
you. I know what she's thinking. Nothing.
The journalist gets the hint and wanders off to find a winner. I feel at my
most useless. I do words, words are my thing, I can make you achieve things
you had no idea you could with plain words. But right now I have none at
all. I turn to Linda the physio - she tells me Goldie lost by four. It's
worse for her, I think, these are her friends. But by now it's pretty bad
for me too. Someone's given Dowbiggin a bottle of beer. She takes a glug. "I
don't even like beer" she says to no-one at all.
I miss my little boy.
With me in the launch had been an American, a Blue returning for his 40th
year reunion or something. His few observations of the race and the crews
were frankly cretinous. I don't like him much. He blusters forward, right up
to Dowbiggin. "Judging from the size of you, I'm guessing you must be a
coxswain" he says to Dowbiggin. I can't believe this, nor can Linda. "Tell
me, when did you cox? Did you win?" I'm standing a couple of yards away with
Linda and we're both thinking nooooooo. Linda tries to intervene. "Ah, well
tell me: why didn't you urge your crew on more as Oxford were coming past,
you needed to tell them to draw UP" he continues, making some ridiculous
rabbit-like motion with his arms. Dowbiggin's eyes widen. I know what to do
now, I'm not going to be useless any more. I grab hold of fuckwit, marching
him away, telling him "your boat's here to take you back to Putney", but
we've only gone a few metres before he spots that that's clearly not true,
he says "no no I think you're wrong" and for a moment he's actually turning
back to Dowbiggin to continue his tirade. I make a lunge again, almost knock
him over, tell him that no really the boats have changed his is definitely
this one, and manhandle him onto Amaryllis which by good fortune is just
arriving.
I get on too. The tide's turning now, soon it'll sweep the whole day away
forever. The pain, I think, will take a lot longer.
--
----------------------------------------
Children's Partyware at Party Ark
http://www.partyark.co.uk
Mike Sullivan
"Alistair Potts" <alistair.p...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:hKednRA2-t49gkDU...@bt.com...
kda...@kidare.com
wrote:
>
> read more »
Are these archived anywhere? They're brilliant.
Kit
d...@rock-the-boat.co.uk
wrote:
> - Saturday 28th March 2008. Putney. The day before the 154th Race.
Alistair
This is another superb tale and so moving. Are you writing a book of
rowing reminiscences (sp?)? I'd like to buy it as a present for me.
And then for lots of other people.
Happy Easter - may the bunny bring lots of chocolate droppings for you
and your wee chap
Dix
Alistair Potts
news:509c846b-b13a-4cef...@v12g2000vbb.googlegroups.com...
> Alistair
> This is another superb tale and so moving. Are you writing a book of
> rowing reminiscences (sp?)? I'd like to buy it as a present for me.
> And then for lots of other people.
> Happy Easter - may the bunny bring lots of chocolate droppings for you
> and your wee chap
> Dix
Hello that's kind. No, my wife was out last night and I just sat down at let
it all fall out and then pressed send before I chicken out. I put it here
because I know that only about ten people look at rsr any more! But I like
them all.
PS "may the bunny bring lots of chocolate droppings" ?! ... Well, it would
certainly come under the 'novelty gifts' description.
david.h...@aea.be
James – turned into music by Pete Atkin):
‘There are handbooks on how not to care
But where are the words, for when you do?’
Maybe you can use that as an intro to this chapter.
blaine...@hotmail.com
wrote:
> I put it here because I know that only about ten people look at rsr any more!
Writing like this will change all that!
I can't think of a rowing book written from the perspective of a cox,
definitely an untapped market.
We all know the small shouty person is important to a crew, but I had
not really understood that they invested as much in the race as those
that toil under their lash.
Thanks for sharing Alistair.
Cheers,
Blaine
Alasdhair Johnston
>definitely an untapped market.
Aside from "The Challenge" by Devin Mahony
http://www.amazon.com/Challenge-Devin-Mahony/dp/0809245957
Mike Sullivan
snip
> The journalist gets the hint and wanders off to find a winner. I feel at
> my most useless. I do words, words are my thing, I can make you achieve
> things you had no idea you could with plain words. But right now I have
> none at all. I turn to Linda the physio - she tells me Goldie lost by
> four. It's worse for her, I think, these are her friends. But by now it's
> pretty bad for me too. Someone's given Dowbiggin a bottle of beer. She
> takes a glug. "I don't even like beer" she says to no-one at all.
>
> I miss my little boy.
Alistair, this is the part of the piece that works best. I've yet to
understand the profound inconsolable loneliness one feels from
failure. The teammates you admire and trust with your own life,
you can't at this moment cannot console or be consoled.
Charles Carroll
Ah, yes, to console oneself with the impossibility of consolation! Know that
one all too well.
Mike Sullivan
"Charles Carroll" <charles...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:74854vF...@mid.individual.net...
>> you can't at this moment cannot console or be consoled.
>
> Ah, yes, to console oneself with the impossibility of consolation! Know
> that one all too well.
I thought about this more tonight. It's an amazing human phenomenon. My
mother
died when I was a young age of 30 or so and was well able to share
the pain, offer consolation, and find a closeness with brothers, sisters,
even some complete strangers to me.
There are failures in rowing both as a rower and a coach that I
felt profoundly alone and helpless. At the time there was a sharp
pain of hatred, that dulled to an ache after a time. At various
times you connect, you talk, you love the men that endured it
with you. Yet we never really connect through that pain, we only
can understand it. We connected profoundly in the trust built
from the great effort we made, and the love of knowing that
your teammate did everything they could.
I'm grateful that in all of my losses over the years in rowing, I've never
coached anybody or rowed with anybody that blamed me for
that loss. This, indeed, is the rub. The failure is personal. It is
all of your own. I've never blamed anyone either. To do so would
be a gross moral failure, worse than the losing of the race.
Indeed, I think that's why failure is inconsolable. The most noble
among us cannot blame our mates for the loss, it is against our nature,
but at the same time we cannot absolve ourselves, for after all
it is failure.
There is a conclusive paragraph to be made here, but I am
not sure what it is yet.
Mike
Stephen and Jane
Alistair's piece is very moving - and I was in tears while reading it
because it reminded me so of our son Leo. Mike's response above is a
fascinating, and equally moving insight. We have a photograph of Leo at
the award ceremony for the final of the local cricket league. He was about
11 or 12 years old. His team did brilliantly to get to the final, but were
narrowly beaten. He had just been awarded his runner up medal, but the look
on his face expresses everything that has been described in this thread. He
was inconsolable.
I have also struggled to understand this. Why is it so difficult for some
of us to forgive ourselves for coming second: for being unlucky on the day -
either due to circumstances, or simply because, on this day, someone else is
functioning better. Why are we not able to find comfort from the fact that
they are talented enough to be in the team in the first place - and from the
pure pleasure of performing the sport, and all the knock on advantages that
brings (skill, fitness, team bonding etc)? I don't think it is to do with
being competitve, or to do with self doubt. Although I recognise it in Leo,
I don't recognise it in myself -I have certainly experienced "failure", but
I have always been able to console myself.
I was very sporty in my youth, and my first experience of team games was
being in the school team for netball (for our American cousins that is a
harder version of basketball). I was about eight years old, as were many of
my team mates and we were often playing against older (and therefore
physically bigger) teams. We lost every match that season, including one by
a margin of approximately 54 to 6. Maybe that is when I developed a coping
strategy for failure! I remember our team being described as "plucky" and
"brave" - all positive attributes.
For our children, we never idolised the concept of always coming first - or
that winning is everything. We endeavoured to nurture the original Olympic
ideal that the reward is in taking part and knowing you have done your best
that the circumstances allow - Leo accepted all that, but it absolutely was
not enough - in sport he had to win. Yet, in other aspects of his life he
had a superbly pragmatic, cheerful and optimistic aspect, which gave him "an
amazing capacity for joy" - the words of one of his friends.
I don't think there can be any logical explanation for this contradiction.
Emotions are, by their very nature, beyond logic - at least modern day
logic.
Thanks guys for sharing these emotions. You may not always have won - but
you are clearly multi-talented and insightful human beings.
Jane
Mike Sullivan
"Stephen and Jane" <stephenDO...@ukgateway.net> wrote in message
news:748refF...@mid.individual.net...
Alistair's prose drills in pretty close to it when he describes how
everything
in one's life focuses to a particular event, a particular outcome. It
comes down to the investment in self, one's very identity attaches to
that particular goal.
I've played many sports at many times in my life. I remember our mile
relay
in high school missed out on making state meet by just a hair, setting a
school
record in the process. It was disappointing but not painful. I've played
basketball, bodysurfed in contests, ran cross country, all kinds of other
things
and getting beat was never any huge deal. In all these other things, I've
always
been able to get over it. Not in rowing, some things will always stick in
my
craw.
coach
wrote:
> > you can't at this moment cannot console or be consoled.
>
> Ah, yes, to console oneself with the impossibility of consolation! Know that
> one all too well.
How a man plays the game shows something of his character, how he
loses shows all of it.
Mike Sullivan
"coach" <richard...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote in message
news:d6f039db-53d1-48fc...@c36g2000yqn.googlegroups.com...
there's a difference between how a man feels and how he
behaves. That's character.
Charles Carroll
> behaves. That's character.
Mike,
Quite so! It is called being an adult. You step aside from what you are
feeling, and chose what you want to do with those feelings.
Cordially,
Charles
Charles Carroll
> loses shows all of it.
Is this yours? I have never heard it before, but it strikes me as just
brilliant.
Puts me in mind of Kipling's "If." Of course the poem is no longer revered
the way it once was. Some contend that it is naïve, others think it silly,
and still others think it is unabashedly elitist. But I respectfully
disagree. I don't think it ever hurts to be reminded of the ideal of our
fathers'.
-------------
"If"
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream-and not make dreams your master,
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And-which is more-you'll be a Man, my son!
By Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936).
Mike Sullivan
>> How a man plays the game shows something of his character, how he
>> loses shows all of it.
>
> Is this yours? I have never heard it before, but it strikes me as just
> brilliant.
>
> Puts me in mind of Kipling's "If." Of course the poem is no longer revered
> the way it once was. Some contend that it is naïve, others think it silly,
> and still others think it is unabashedly elitist. But I respectfully
> disagree. I don't think it ever hurts to be reminded of the ideal of our
> fathers'.
I knew a coach who would recite this poem once a year.
I never got it, I'm afraid, I was in the latter camp.
Ever see Ernest Shackleton's parody?
If you can stand the Quest and all her antics
When all around you turn somersaults upon her deck;
And go aloft when no one has told you
And not fall down and break your blooming neck;
If you can work like Wild and also like Wuzzles
Spend a convivial night with some old bean,
And then come down and meet the Boss at breakfast
And never breathe a word of where you've been.
If you can fill the port and starboard bunkers
With fourteen tons of coal; and call it fun;
Yours is the ship and everything that's in it
And you're a marvel; not a man my son.
Charles Carroll
> I never got it, I'm afraid, I was in the latter camp.
But Mike,
In another thread didn't you just write:
"When the awareness shrinks to a pinhole and all you feel is pain, when all
the air you need has been evacuated from the atmosphere and it feels like
you're inhaling ammonia, very very few ppl are competitive enough to keep
pushing harder and harder just because they want to win. Most of us at that
point learn to keep pushing so we don't let our teammate down."
Compare to Kipling:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
Sounds suspiciously like the same message. I also knew a few people who love
Kipling's poem. I have one friend who still carries a copy of it in his
wallet.
By the way, I enjoyed Shackleon's parody.
Cordially,
Charles
Mike Sullivan
>> I knew a coach who would recite this poem once a year.
>> I never got it, I'm afraid, I was in the latter camp.
>
> But Mike,
>
> In another thread didn't you just write:
>
> "When the awareness shrinks to a pinhole and all you feel is pain, when
> all the air you need has been evacuated from the atmosphere and it feels
> like you're inhaling ammonia, very very few ppl are competitive enough to
> keep pushing harder and harder just because they want to win. Most of us
> at that point learn to keep pushing so we don't let our teammate down."
>
> Compare to Kipling:
>
> If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
> To serve your turn long after they are gone,
> And so hold on when there is nothing in you
> Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
It's a similar thought, but read back on our thread
about "pep talks".
"IF" is probably an excellent poem but its' particular use
made me pretty nutty at the time, subsequently it's queered the
poem for me so that it seems a parody of itself.
When I was a youngster, "In Flanders Field" used to be my
favorite poem, a stirring call to glory. I can still recite it.
After Vietnam and after
I learned more about the history of the world I wondered why the
dead would want the young living to follow them into hideous
fruitless carnage. I think Eric Bogle is a far more appropriate
poet for that disaster of history.
I remember in college for about a year or so it was popular
to see a poster up with the poem Desiderata after the popular
radio recording came out. I bet I had one, it was commonly
thought of as a good dorm chick magnet.
A year later a parody called Deteriorata was made of it and was
on Dr Demento every Sunday. Sort of did that fine old poem in,
do you remember that?
"Rotate your tires".
I looked it up just now and found out that Christopher Guest wrote
the music for it. Awesome!
I'm sure Kipling won't mind if I'm no longer impressed. :^)
david.h...@aea.be
Youtube - better to turn off the screen and just listen to the
soundtrack. There used to be an 'official' version, possibly on the
National Lampoon site, but I don't find it now.
35 years since I last heard 'Radio Dinner' (owned by a rowing
flatmate, for tenuous on-topicry) but I can still remember large
chunks of it - 'Welcome to Haiti', 'Catch It and you Keep It', Joan
Baez singing 'Pull the Tregroes' and a vicious attack by Lennon on
McCartney.
Oh to be a student again.
carolinetu
when I was at school. Good at maths, languages, just about any
academic subject, but too heavy for athletics, too short sighted for
ball games. It wasn't until I discovered rowing (in my mid 20s) that
I realised there was a sport which I could actually do - and do quite
well, if not at the top level.
I don't care about winning, when I'm in a boat I get a sense of
achievement with every stroke. And a huge thrill when the people I
coach win a race.
Caroline
Phil
>
> read more »
Heck, if you win it's only first out of two.....