What happened to the warriors at the Thermopylae?

Dead to the last man

I knew our freshman class at Cornell was special; coming in Kleinberg had won everything there was to win in junior rowing in the United States and was acing engineering physics and math exams without studying, the a-bomb had won the eight at Canadian Henley, and we went to Derby and took those Yale and Princeton shirts from lane four because they belonged to us. We knew it from the start. Now one of those men sold a business for millions, another one is an equity partner at the best law firm in the world, and another has made so much money he is the biggest Cornell donor in our class. We take our feedback from markets you see, no new age bullshit like happiness, and work life balance. We were like this since childhood.

Within that sea of excellence Craig stood out and not just because he came from the south and had to overcome some adversity during this period that was unknown to the rest of us, but because he had a singular and deep kind of intelligence. Whereas Kleinberg could hit a 99 percentile in the MCAT with no preparation, Craig seemed to have read every important literary work in the Western canon, retained the important concepts, and be able to apply them to the all important task of forging men that could succeed in life, business, and most importantly, rowing. Craig was also a beneficiary of the happy accident that Igor Grinko and Harmut Buschbacher, found themselves in the south of the US during his formative period as a sculler. Why two of the best technical directors in the history of the sport wound up in Chattanooga and Augusta is for another post, but greatness is impossible without fortune.

Craig knows the Italian, German, British, Dutch, and New Zealand programs, all of the Rippetoe canon, Westside Barbell literature, the Smolov Front Squat Routine, Dan John, et al. He knows about Capital in the 21st Century, and the Road to Serfdom, he knows about the Thermopylae and about the Seelow Heights. With this background when one sits down to draft the progression work out in preparation for a National Championship it has to have not only physiological but philosophical purpose. We settled for 8 x 250m, 1min followed by 5 x 5 front squat. The objective is to get those under 45s by Nationals. The front squat addition is some innovation based on work by Dan John, Litvinov, and the Dutch National rowing team confirming strength adaptation can be enhanced when done in conjunction with metabolic conditioning. And of course for Buschbacher and Grinko the bases of the lifting component for sculling are the front squat and the strict pull-up. Beyond that of course, on the philosophical front, it must feel so bad "Jesus asks to work in". When one is lucky enough to have an erg to deal with things when life gets shitty it's important to make it count.

Craig and I come from the most violent geographies in North America. Georgia, scenario of brutal fighting during the United States Civil War, and Mexico City, 5 times conquered by foreign armies and epicenter of at least 12 coup d'etats ("cuartelazos") in the XIX and XX Centuries. Both are, perhaps paradoxically, very polite cultures. "Lo cortés no quita lo valiente", my grandfather used to say, and there will be no surrender.

Aqui nadie se raja.