The Boys in the Boat

The boys continue to practice on the racetrack but find their times are not improving; Ulbrickson isn’t “at all happy with their progress” (322). Adding to their problems is the fact that the US will be in the farthest lane, the one most difficult to row, while Germany and Italy, the Axis powers, are granted the easiest lanes closest to land. The preliminaries are fast approaching, and the boys become “tense and fidgety” (324). Don becomes ill with a severe respiratory infection and sits out of practice. Each boy feels that he is the crew’s weakest link. In the last days leading up to the preliminaries, “everything began to feel right again” when Don rallies and returns to the boat (326). By the day of the preliminaries, Don is sick again, having lost 18 pounds during his illness. He decides to row anyway.

The first preliminary race begins. The team gets “away badly again” (331) on the second stroke, but Bobby ups the stroke rate again and again until they reach 40, finally pulling ahead of the British boat, winning the race, and allowing Don to finally “collapse across his oar” (331). They have set a new course record.

The next morning, Don’s fever spikes, and Ulbrickson decides to replace him with an alternate. The other boys protest vehemently, with Stub declaring that “Hume was absolutely vital to the rhythm of the boat” (335), as he is the stroke man. Joe suggests they simply strap Don in and take him along for the ride. Ulbrickson relents. Don will race.

The weather is cold and rainy on the day of the final Olympic race. The boys get in the Husky Clipper but do not feel good about their chances, “not out in lane six and not with Don Hume looking like a dead man” (339). Back in Seattle, Harry, the kids, and Joyce sit around the radio listening to news of the race; Joyce has placed a four-leaf clover given to her by Joe atop the radio for luck. In Berlin, the wind picks up and the starter, the man who announces the start of the race, takes to his podium, located conveniently close to the German and Italian boats but out of sight of the US and British boats. He waves the starter flag, and the German and Italian boats take off. Neither Bobby nor the British coxswain heard him. Their boats are “motionless at the line, dead in the water” (341).

Joe sees the other boats pull away and shouts to Bobby, who yells for the team to row, but they are “already a stroke and a half behind in the race of their lives” (343). Germany takes the lead, though it is not a commanding one. The US is in last place, but Bobby tells Don to ease up on the stroke rate. The winds whip even stronger, increasing resistance from the water. At 300 meters, Don “suddenly [goes] white in the face” and stops responding to Bobby or anyone else (345). At the halfway mark, the US is still dead last, and Bobby can’t wait any longer. He screams for Don to take the rate higher, but Don does nothing; he is in some sort of a trance. Bobby’s only option is to hand the stroke rate off to Joe, but that may “confuse everyone with an oar in his hand” (347).

Just as Bobby is about to tell Joe to take over the stroke, Don comes back to life. He looks Bobby in the eyes and picks up the pace. The boat eases “from fifth to third place” (347). Bobby raises the stroke again and again until the US boat is tied with Germany and Italy, out in front. Bobby lies to his teammates, assuring them they’re at the race’s end, driving them to a sprint. As they near the finish line, the roar from the crowd drowns Bobby out, so he bangs his oar on the side of the boat, begging the boys to row faster. Joe has no idea what’s happening, only that “he hurt as he’d never hurt before” (349). The boys hit 44 strokes per minute, which is nearly unheard of. Then, “in the span of a single second, the German, Italian, and American boats” all cross the finish line together (350). No one knows who won.

Finally, the official results come in over the loudspeaker, in German: The US boat won by six-tenths of a second. The Germans stop applauding. Joe’s family in Seattle cries with joy, and Joyce hugs her future father-in-law for the first time. The boys in the boat smile, wrapped up in “the greatest moment of their lives” (351).