The Boys in the Boat: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

In January 1934, Joe and Joyce went back to Seattle, where it was still raining. Crew practice began on January 8, and Joe gradually became accustomed to the team’s “workout schedule.” The team would train for a single race: the Pacific Coast Regatta. Then, if the team did well, it would race against Eastern schools in the national freshman championship. Bolles was an excellent coach; he’d never coached a team that lost a race to California in the Pacific Coast Regatta. The team rowed six days a week, through pouring rain. Meanwhile, Al Ulbrickson worked his upperclassmen hard. However, he quickly became disappointed with his team’s performance. One evening, Ulbrickson watched the freshman team row against the varsity team, almost beating them.

At the University of California, Ky Ebright, the crew coach, was also working with a lackluster varsity team. Ebright was a short, angry man and a great coach, who’d coached an Olympic gold medal team in 1928. Ebright had been a University of Washington coxswain, but later he’d gone to Cal after being passed over for head coach. Ebright quickly built Cal’s program into one of America’s best. He bought his shells from George Pocock, still regarded as the world’s best boatmaker. However, he became suspicious that Pocock had cut a deal with Washington and sold Cal defective boats. Ebright’s suspicions concerning Pocock threatened Pocock’s business. During the Depression, many crew programs disappeared, making it hard for Pocock to stay in business. Ebright goaded Pocock for charging high prices and for working too closely with the Washington team. Offended by Ebright’s accusations, Pocock tried to “smooth things out”; he even began giving rowing advice to Cal coaches. Pocock’s behavior further escalated tensions between Cal and Washington.

By spring of 1934, Bolles had become frustrated with his freshmen—they seemed to be getting slower, not faster. Rowers need to work together, and if one rower’s attentions are divided, the entire boat suffers as a result. Bolles wondered if Joe Rantz was the weakest link on the team—he’d rowed in the third seat (usually reserved for technically proficient rowers) and seventh seat (usually reserved for some of the strongest or most attentive rowers) with little success. Joe was powerful, but his form was poor, and he struggled to work with his team. He continued to feel out of place at the University of Washington—his classmates laughed at his clothes and rough manners.

By March, the freshman team was doing better. On one occasion, Ulbrickson pitted the freshman, varsity, and junior varsity teams against each other. The freshman team gained a commanding lead, and easily defeated the varsity boat. Bolles realized then that he had “something exceptional.” The freshman team was successful that spring for two distinct reasons. Crew teams’ speeds are determined by their stroke rate and the power of their strokes; the higher the stroke rate, the lower the power is likely to be. Bolles was impressed with the freshman team’s stroke rate and power; he also admired the way they worked together and used their heads to row strategically.

Around the same time, Ky Ebright and his Cal team were preparing to travel up to Washington for the annual race against Bolles’ team. Ebright had good reason to feel optimistic about his team’s chances; his freshmen were the best he’d ever coached, even better than the freshmen who’d gone on to win Olympic gold in 1932. Knowing that the Cal team was good, Bolles made an effort to make pessimistic statements about his team’s chances in the newspapers, so that Cal would underestimate its opponents.

On April 13, the teams from Cal and Washington faced off in Lake Washington. Joyce was watching as Joe prepared to row. Lately, she’d been working as a maid in a judge’s house—a job she hated. Joyce, along with tens of thousands of other people, had come out to watch the race, which the people of Seattle regarded as one of the biggest events of the year.

The freshman teams from Cal and Washington competed first. Cal, rowing with a high stroke rate, got off to an early lead, but Washington brought the race back to a tie by the quarter-mile mark. Slowly, rowing at just thirty strokes per minute, Washington began to overtake Cal at the one-mile mark. By the mile-and-a-half mark, Washington had a decisive lead; it ended up winning by more than four boatlengths, beating the freshman record by twenty seconds. The Seattle crowd cheered. Later, Joe embraced Joyce and danced with her under the Seattle sky.

On the same day, Joseph Goebbels and his wife had a child. Life was good for Goebbels: the Olympic stadium was being torn down and replaced with a larger one. Goebbels had also recently organized a massive book-burning directed at so-called subversive thinkers, including Einstein. He was also investing significant funds in the film industry, recognizing that films could be used to glamorize the Nazi state.

There was a young woman working in the German film industry, a close friend of Hitler, who would go on to “shape the destiny of the Nazi movement.” Her name was Leni Riefenstahl and she had “an indomitable will to succeed.” She was a dancer, an actress, and—rare for a woman the time—a director. Her film The Blue Light was one of Hitler’s favorites; afterwards, he commissioned her to direct Victory of Faith, a propaganda film about a Nazi rally. Goebbels became jealous of Riefenstahl’s success, but he also admired her films and her beauty. Together, Goebbels and Riefenstahl would play a major role in the way the world viewed the 1936 Olympics.