The author of the book begins with a prologue, revealing that he had the opportunity to meet the main character, Joe Rantz, and that they spent long hours talking about Joe’s experience and about his past.
The first chapter opens in the year 1933, in Seattle. In 1933, America was entering its fourth year in the Great Depression and more than a quarter of Americans were unemployed. While things were grim, there was some hope as a new president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was elected and he tried to make things better. At the same time in Germany, Adolf Hitler was elected as the new leader and he as well was trying to solve the economic problems in his country.
In October, two students at the University of Washington, Roger Morris and Joe Rantz, registered to join the University of Washington freshmen crew team. Joe was a good athlete and he hoped that by joining the team, he would be able to pay for his tuition fees. Many students applied for a place on the team but they knew that the chances of being accepted were slim because they had little to no experience with rowing. The coaches of the team, Tom Bolles and Al Ulbrickson came from modest families as well and knew that most of the boys applying for a place in the team were farm boys that never rowed a boat. Ulbrickson was confident about his team’s chance of winning the Olympics and he dreamt of going against the most powerful teams in the world.
In the same year in Germany, Werner Marcht renovated some old buildings and drafted plans for new one to be constructed for the 1936 Olympics. Even though Hitler was against the Olympics in the beginning, he was advised by his Propaganda director to accept hosting them since it would portray Germany in a positive light.
Rowing was considered in those times as being the most demanding sport and many people were known to give up after a few months. Rowing was a sport invented by the English and it was considered an aristocrat sport in the 17th and 18th century. The boat builders were often subject to injuries and they sometimes lost some of their fingers. Rowing became popular in the US after the First World War and being a member in a rowing club became an honor.
Joe Rantz was accepted in the rowing team, and he was pleased to see that the first ones to give up were the ones coming from wealthy families who were not accustomed to pain. Joe had a rough childhood so he was used to having a hard life. When Joe was young, his mother died and then his father remarried quickly a woman much younger than he was. Joe’s father had a number of children with his new wife and because the economic situation became hard, Joe was forced to live alone. Then, in his last year of high school, Joe moved in with his brother and he lived there for a year. After Joe decided to work for a year, he proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Joyce Simdars.
By November, more than half of the original men who tried out for the rowing team dropped out. To support himself, Joe worked as a janitor and played in a jazz band. Joyce, who also joined the college, found work as a maid and they both worked hard to sustain themselves. His hard work paid off and towards the end of the year, Joe was told that he made first boat alongside another man named Roger. Almost immediately, Joe became more famous because of his place on the team.
In January, the team began training again despite the harsh weather and the coach hoped to prepare the team for competitions. Despite the coach’s efforts, the team’s efficiency seemed to be dropping. The coach believed that Joe was the reason why the team was failing and Joe was feeling that he couldn't fit in anywhere. In March, the team got better and the coach felt as if things were improving. The team members were working together more swiftly and their technique improved as well. On April 13, the team raced against the team from Cal on Lake Washington and the Washington team won even though they were at a disadvantage in the beginning.
After their victory, the team seemed to have taken a step back but they recovered quickly and in June the team travelled to New York to complete their championship. There, they won again despite racing on an unfamiliar territory. When the team returned home, the financial situation was even worst and some unions decided to go on strike. Franklin Roosevelt managed to calm the workers by promising them to build a dam that would generate new jobs and also cheap electricity.
Despite becoming more famous because of his status as a rower, Joe still had to work odd jobs to support himself. During the summer of 1934, Joe worked with wood in Sequim and he learned new techniques that he ended up applying to rowing.
In fall, the team began training again and some were confident that the team could qualify for the Olympics. Joe was put to row on the fifth boat and he felt discouraged by this. Joe also found that his father moved to Seattle but Joe’s stepmother, Thula, refused to see them.
The weather became bad in November and the teams had to stop training for a while because of the rain. In January the next year, Ulbrickson announced that he wanted to train the team for the 1936 Olympic Games and that announcement sparked rivalries between the members of the team as everyone secretly hoped to be the ones chosen to go to Berlin.
The sophomore year was not as strong as Ulbrickson wanted it to be and so one day he summoned them into his office to have a talk with them about their tactics and improving their skills. Joe felt discouraged after the talk with Ulbrickson and he felt even less confident in his own powers. Ulbrickson tried to combine freshmen rowers and sophomore rowers and he quickly realized that the problem was that the rowers were not capable of cooperating and that they relied too much on their individual strength. Despite this, Ulbrickson named the sophomore team the varsity team but the freshman team wanted to be named varsity team. Ulbrickson then agreed to name the varsity team based on which team rowed the fastest at the Pacific Coast Regatta. Despite the sophomore team being the one which lost, Ulbrickson decided to use it. During the varsity team race, the Washington team won, thus proving that Ulbrickson was right to choose the sophomore team.
Back in Seattle, the team was awarded for their victory and Joe felt confident again. However, after a few weeks, the sophomore team was demoted to JV status and the freshman year to the varsity status. Despite this, the sophomore team continued to win and Ulbrickson was confident that the team could win all three races at Poughkeepsie. However, the team lost the varsity race and it was rumored that Ulbrickson was going to be fired.
In the summer of 1935, Joe had to look for work and he had to go work on the dam but he continued to think about rowing. Joe tried to remain positive even though he was demoted to JV. Meanwhile, Ulbrickson raced with his varsity team against Cal and ended up winning. Joe learned that that two of his teammates were also working on the dam, Johnny White and Chuck Day. Both young men had a difficult financial situation and tried to make some money to keep themselves in college. The three became close that summer and found the time to behave like teenagers and have fun. Joe returned to Seattle in September and he then found out that Harry and Thula had been neglecting their children, letting them go days without any food.
Ulbrickson was building his team for the Olympics and he was thinking about the possibility of making Joe a member of the team as well. At the same time, some were protesting about America participating in the Olympic games because they thought that the new rules imposed by Hitler were unfair.
Joe continued to train and work and he made friends along the way so he no longer felt like an outcast. In October, the teams began training again and the coach announced that he would be picking men from both teams to participate in the Olympics and so new rivalries appeared. Around the same time, Thula died and even though Joe never liked her he reached out to his father who told Joe that he was welcomed to live with them again. The rowing teams continued to train through the harsh weather and it was decide that a competition would determine who would be on the Olympic team.
In January, Joe was told that he, Shorty and Roger were going to be on the varsity team despite not being able to work together very well. With Pocock’s help the team improved. Joe was eventually put on the first boat in March and he began right away to befriend the other men in the boat. The coach made Joe’s boat the varsity team and then he raced with them in various competitions. Ulbrickson even made his team eat a strict diet to have a better chance of winning. His efforts in the end paid off and he won three consecutive competitions.
To ensure that his team would go to Germany, Ulbrickson urged them to do well in school and to eliminate any type of distraction they may have. Ulbrickson also changed the team’s strategy hoping that it would help them win. There was a possibility that Ulbrickson’s team would be replaced by another one but he tried to keep his team from finding out about the rumors.
The team had the opportunity to meet the president’s son while they were away for a competition and the team found that he was interested as well in rowing. That year, the team won three consecutive races at Poughkeepsie but they knew they still had a long way to go until they could safely say that they would be the team to go to Berlin.
In July 1936, the team went to Princeton for the trials for the Olympic Games and they distinguished themselves as being the best. Thus, the Washington team was the one chosen to go to the Olympics that year. Unfortunately, the team had to pay for the road and for the accommodations so the team had another hurdle to pass. Fortunately, donations quickly came in and the team had enough money to go to Berlin. The team trained for a while at Long Island and then it left to Berlin on a boat with other athletes such as Jesse Owens.
During the voyage, many athletes got seasick and lost a lot of weight. Ulbrickson forbade his team to train during the voyage because he feared that an artificial environment would make the team lose its efficiency. When they reached Germany, the team was put to live in a beautiful hotel and the team members spent most of their time visiting Berlin. The team saw a perfectly civilized country and they couldn’t believe that Germany was capable of horrible things.
The American rowing team declined during their trip and they no longer performed as they did when they started their voyage. The Olympic Games opened on the first of August 1936 and the American athletes were received with mixed feelings by the German audience.
Ulbrickson decided that his team needed to be controlled better as the athletes made a habit out of going out too often, drinking too much alcohol and eating an unhealthy diet. The team got back on track a few days before the Olympic Games started but because their boat was damaged, they did poorly in the beginning. The Americans however managed to set a new World Record and won the first preliminary races, defeating the UK. The Americans and the British had been given the worst lanes to row on and on top of that, a man from the American team got sick. Ulbrickson wanted to replace him but the other insisted that they needed to remain in the same formation in order to win.
On the day of the race, the Americans and the British got off to a bad start because they didn’t see when the race was started. Despite this, the American team won by a second before the other teams. America went on to win other medals and the rowing team spent their remaining time visiting Berlin and watching other completions.
The narrator presents the lives of some of the members from the rowing team after they returned to the U.S. Joe married Joyce and he then became an engineer, building planes used in the Second World War. He had five children with Joyce and then in 1971 he and the other members were inducted into the Rowing Hall of Fame.
