While running, swimming or even participating in team sports one performs to his own limits, limits set by individual conditioning and determination. When exhausted, the individual decides to endure, change pace, walk or collapse. As part of an eight, however, one performs at the level of the crew. When every part of each body says stop, inexplicably the boat still continues. Individual limitations reassert themselves only when the race is over; only then is the body released from the tyranny of the shell and allowed to vomit, lose consciousness or gracefully expire. . . . In rowing not only is the intensity of energy expenditure greater than that of other physical endeavors but the possibility of for exertion can become greater. Ordinarily the limitation of a crew is its weakest member; however, at the moment of transcendence, which oarsmen refer to as swing, the limit of the crew is beyond the strongest.

Stephen Kiesling