The Boys in the Boat

That summer Joe travels to the Grand Coulee dam site, hoping to make enough money to get him through another year at Washington. He takes the highest-paying job available, one that requires him to dangle off sheer cliff faces, and finds that two of his Washington teammates—Johnny and Chuck—are working there as well. The three fall “into an easy and comfortable confederacy” (202), breaking Ulbrickson’s rules on drinking and smoking, watching movies with women of dubious morality, and behaving like actual teenagers, “free and easy boys, cut loose in the wide expanse of the western desert” (205). Joe ponders what an Olympic medal would mean to him and whether it would fill the holes in his heart left by childhood abandonment and instability.

Meanwhile, in Seattle, Ulbrickson takes his varsity boys to a one-off race against Cal and others in Long Beach, California. The race is short, only 2,000 meters, and his varsity boys lose to Cal by half a second. Ulbrickson heads home with another defeat, “quite possibly his last” (197).

In Germany, the old Olympic Stadium has been “dramatically transformed” (207). The new stadium is grand and impressive; the building surrounding it will be turned to rubble during World War II.