"To hell with the silver medal. I don't want the silver. I want my torture to end. Then I can be free. I will do it here, now, in this moment, with these strokes, with the strength of my body, with the strength of my soul. Dig in."

"Rowing and food are wonderfully inseperable."

Marathon runners talk about hitting 'the wall' at the twenty-third mile of the race. What rowers confront isn't a wall; it's a hole - an abyss of pain, which opens up in the second minute of the race. Large needles are being driven into your thigh muscles, while your forearms seem to be splitting. Then the pain becomes confused and disorganized, not like the windedness of the runner or the leg burn of the biker but an all-over, savage unpleasantness. As you pass the five-hundred-meter mark, with three-quarters of the race still to row, you realize with dread that you are not going to make it to the finish, but at the same time the idea of letting your teammates down by not rowing your hardest is unthinkable...Therefore, you are going to die. Welcome to this life.

"There are days when you hate it, but when it comes down to it, nothing beats making a boat go fast and the feeling you get from training hard. That's what satisfying."

I do more before 8 am than most people do all day

"Few sports has as great a disparity between the time committed in practice and time actually spent in game or race conditions."