“Burn developed a unique, personal style of sculling that took him years of experimentation to perfect. He engaged the arms, body and legs simultaneously at the catch, and rowed at unusually high stroke ratings for an entire 2000 meter race, over 40 strokes per minute.”

Doing that in an eight with seven other people for a full 2000 meters sounds arduous enough … imagine how taxing, both mentally and physically, it is doing it by yourself in a single.