BACK OF THE BOOK
Rowing on
the Chao Phra
in Bangkok,
Thailand.
jecting the race, medals and trophies, interviews of
winners… it feels like the Olympics!
It was a very hot day with very strong competition. I ended up in a borrowed boat for that race,
and I made mistakes on the course that should not
only have knocked me out of first place but also
out of the shell, but I won — probably by surprising
the other rowers. I was as thrilled to haul a rather
large trophy through the Orlando airport.
It sounds like there is a lot of camaraderie among
the rowing community.
There is, which I think is often the case in smaller,
less popular sports.
Recently, I was in Austin, Texas, for a meeting.
Surprisingly, Texas has many rowing clubs. I “joined”
a rowing club in Austin and, since everybody there
was leaving the next day to go to a big race, they
just handed me a key to the clubhouse. I strolled
down to the Colorado River the next morning,
opened the clubhouse doors to find hundreds of
thousands of dollars-worth of boats. I was trusted
to take care of a nice racing shell, not crash it, wash
it, and get it back in a rack. That sort of accommodation is not such an unusual experience.
What have been the most memorable places to row?
Worldwide, there are some experiences that do
stand out – for good and bad reasons. St. Petersburg was memorable for being miserable: awful
weather, an unattractive course in the midst of an
industrial site, and distracted staff since Putin was
arriving the next day to oversee the President’s Regatta. The boat club was extremely courteous for
allowing me, but there is not a tradition of amateur rowing in Russia, so I felt like I was intruding
in a highly competitive environment.
ASHClinicalNews.org
Africa was spectacularly wonderful. Johannes
Swart, son of hematologist Andre Swart, drove me
out to the Pretoria University summer clubhouse; I
was alone for several hours of a beautiful morning
on a calm lake with many exotic (non-threatening)
birds and animals. In Thailand, ASH member
Surapol Issarigrisil helped me arrange a single shell
to row the massive Chao Phraya river, and I detoured
into a klong, or small canal, past riverside homes,
restaurants, and temples. I felt that maybe no one
had taken a racing scull ever on that route before!
Finally, thanks to friends and hematologists all
over the world: Rodrigo Calado and Phil Scheinberg
awoke very early to accompany me to the Olympic
venue in Rio (South America was the last continent
on my list); Keiya Ozawa and Shinji Nakao provided
rowing in Tokyo and Kanazawa; Velu Nair arranged
a military row in Pune, India; and Carlo Dufour in
Genova, Italy, and many other European colleagues
helped me find host clubs there.
When do you find the time to row?
Most of the rowing I do is from the Potomac Boat
Club in Washington, and I am typically on the
water at 4:30 or 5:00 a.m. Being up that early is
an interesting experience – even a bit scary. The
Potomac is a very big river, and it can look even
bigger when you’re alone on the water on a snowy
winter morning. Also, I like the experience of the
city without traffic. All in all, it’s a different life.
My friends know that I am not a night person.
Does anyone else in your family row?
My youngest, Giorgio, was the only one of my three
sons who inherited the desire to row, or allowed
me to impose it on him. He is a natural sculler, and,
for a while, the most-famous rower in the family:
In 2011, he was the Virginia Scholastic Rowing Association State Champion, on one of the happiest
days of my life. Giorgio also became involved as
a coach in “adaptive rowing” in Washington, DC.
Adaptive rowing is for people with disabilities,
usually loss of use of their lower extremities.
Giorgio and I still row together when he’s home
from school. We tend to keep our distance on the
river, though, since we can be critical of each other’s
technique!
What kind of skills do you use in your hematology career that you also use in rowing? Is there
any overlap?
The hope is that they don’t overlap! I think it’s
okay to compartmentalize and not have everything
somehow bear on career. For instance, I play a
musical instrument, and I used to credit my painless
bone marrow biopsies to my skilled fingers, but
there are plenty of excellent, non-musical surgeons!
I’ve loved being in the water since I was a child.
There’s a famous line from The Wind in the Willows:
“There is absolutely nothing half so much worth
doing as simply messing about in boats,” and the
“messing around” part is important because it
needn’t be directed toward anything, including getting in shape or winning a competition. There is also
the wonder of being in nature in all seasons and in
many water and weather conditions, both all over
the word and 10 minutes from home.
A very important aspect of rowing is that my
mind isn’t occupied by work. There’s a Zen quality
in such a highly repetitive sport that demands your
presence in what you are feeling and doing in the
moment. If I am really rowing, I am just thinking
about making the next stroke better, even perfect; if
I am preoccupied by work, I am not really rowing. ●
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