American Experience (1988–…): Season 28, Episode 10 - The Boys of '36 - full transcript

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♪♪

NARRATOR:
On a chilly August day in 1936,

just outside Berlin, Germany,

a team of American boys
prepared to row

the biggest race of their lives
at the Olympic Games.

(crowd cheering)

The competition
that would become known

as Adolf Hitler's Games
was nearly complete.

The Nazi leader had regarded
the Olympics as a chance

to introduce the world
to the glory of a new Germany



and prove Aryan supremacy
through athletic triumph.

The host nation had won
more medals than any other.

And on this afternoon,

with Hitler at the race course,
German rowers

earned gold medals in the first
five races of the day,

to the delight of the Fuhrer.

Now, in the final race,

they were looking to continue
their domination.

TIMOTHY EGAN:
The Americans
walk into this thing

thinking they're in a race.

But what they actually are
are a part of the global stage.

NARRATOR:
As tens of thousands of
spectators filled the grandstand

and millions back
in the United States

tuned into their radios,
the Americans entered the water.



With a key member of their team

suffering from a severe
lung infection,

and the worst lane assignment
on the course,

putting them directly in the
face of an unrelenting wind,

adversity was once again
shadowing the nine boys

who'd brought their racing shell
across the world

from what was still
America's frontier.

EGAN:
These guys were nobodies.

The odds of these blue-collar
boys living in the worst time

in American history
becoming sports heroes

were just astronomical.

NARRATOR:
On October 9, 1933, in Seattle,
at the old airplane hangar

that served as
the University of Washington's

shell house, several dozen boys
showed up for crew practice.

The bulk of them
would ultimately succumb

to rowing's cruel demands,

leaving the team behind.

A few of them,
however, would not.

EGAN:
These kids
were very representative

of the Pacific Northwest,
which was raw, newly shaped.

The city of Seattle was only
about 80 years old.

These boys were the sons of
loggers, the sons of fishermen.

They did odd jobs
for a buck a day.

They used their hands as claws
and their backs as levers,

you know?

They were grunts.

DANIEL JAMES BROWN:
This was the middle of the
Depression, and these guys

were having a hard time
putting a couple meals a day

in front of themselves.

NARRATOR:
One member of
the Washington crew

well acquainted
with that hardship

was a 19-year-old
named Joe Rantz.

Rantz had been born
the second of two boys

in Spokane, a lumber town
across the state from Seattle.

When he was four years old,
he watched his mother die

of lung cancer.

BROWN:
He remembered the handkerchief
with blood on it

when she'd take it away
from her mouth.

He remembered
being at her funeral.

But he never really
knew his mother.

NARRATOR:
He was sent east
to be with an aunt for a time,

and eventually, returned
to the care of his father Harry

and stepmother Thula.

Their life together was fraught
with financial troubles

and emotional tension
from the outset.

BROWN:
They found themselves living
at this gold and ruby mine

out in Idaho.

Thula took a dislike to Joe
almost immediately.

One day, Joe got in a spat
with Thula's child.

Thula was just outraged,
and demanded that Joe

leave the house.

Joe's father took him
up to the schoolhouse,

and the teacher agreed
to let Joe stay there

if he would chop wood to keep
the stove fed day and night.

To feed himself he had to work
at the camp kitchen.

So he found himself
basically living on his own

for the first time when he was
just ten years old.

NARRATOR:
Joe lived in the schoolhouse
for a few months

before moving with his family
to another town in Washington.

There, the Rantzes' troubles
only deepened,

and Joe became a casualty
of the desperation.

BROWN:
A day came when Joe
came home from school,

and he found the family car
with the whole family in it,

and all kinds of luggage in it.

And he didn't know what was
going on, and his father said,

"We can't make it here.

"We're going to leave, Joe.

"But the thing is, you're
going to have to stay behind.

Thula doesn't want you
to come with us."

JUDY WILLMAN:
He started to drive
out the driveway.

And Harry and Mike,
the little brothers,

were looking out the back window
of the car,

and he could just hear Harry
screaming, "What about Joe?

What about Joe?"

EGAN:
It was emblematic of other kids
during the Great Depression.

You had the economic thing,
not knowing where your next meal

is going to come from, and then
you had the family dysfunction.

The only place you can go,
the place to call home,

that was taken away
from Joe Rantz.

And it was somewhat typical,
because people felt like,

"I just don't have the means
to give food to this child."

So he comes out of those two
completely broken systems,

the two foundations
of living, basically.

WILLMAN:
But there was where he really
had to make the decision of,

"Am I a victim
or am I a survivor?"

Because he had to pick up his
life from there...

Had to, somehow.

NARRATOR:
The teenager lived alone
for two years.

He hunted and fished for food,
and made money by selling

stolen liquor
and working as a logger.

All the while,
he remained in school.

Then his older brother invited
him to come live in Seattle.

For the first time,
he could live something close

to a normal life.

He began competing
in school sports.

One day, he caught the eye of
the University of Washington

crew coach, Al Ulbrickson,
who was looking for

potential rowers to recruit.

BROWN:
Ulbrickson showed up
at Roosevelt High School,

and he noticed this
big, tall, blond kid

on the gymnastics equipment.

Joe had great
upper body strength.

He'd been cutting hay
and digging ditches

from the time he was 14 on.

WILLMAN:
I'm not even sure before that

that he really had his eye
on college.

He had somebody that wanted him.

I think he saw an open door
and he decided

he would go through it.

BROWN:
There were no
scholarships for rowing

at the University of Washington
in those days.

As long as you were
in good standing on the crew,

they would find a part-time job
for you somewhere on the campus.

And for somebody like Joe Rantz
that made all the difference.

ERIC COHEN:
There were multiple men
on that team

that were finding it hard
to survive, and had found it

hard to survive up to the time
that they had gotten

to Washington.

BROWN:
Gordy Adam worked on a salmon
boat to make money for college.

Very hardworking kid,
very tough.

Roger Morris would find himself
working for his father

on the weekends, time and again

moving families
out of their homes...

Homes they had lost
because of the Depression.

Stub McMillin was working
at nights as a janitor.

Stub was having a very hard time
making ends meet.

EGAN:
Some of them got into rowing
for the food.

I mean, they knew they were
going to get fed regular meals

by the University of Washington,
which seems laughable

to a modern audience,

but it was a big deal back then.

COHEN:
So these guys were hanging on
by the skin of their teeth.

MAN:
Keep your shoulders
squared around.

NARRATOR:
By June of 1934, at the end
of his first year on campus,

Joe Rantz had emerged
as one of the strongest rowers

on the freshman crew.

He joined his Washington Huskies
teammates on a journey

across the country

to Poughkeepsie, New York,

site of the National Collegiate
Rowing Championship.

There, Rantz and his teammates
would face crews from Cornell,

Columbia, and Penn...

Opponents with backgrounds
very different than their own.

EGAN:
You have the worst lot in life
against privilege.

And all of that happens
when they go against

the Ivy Leaguers.

But then add to that
the regional thing of,

"Oh, the Pacific Northwest.

"I suppose if I ever thought
about it I wouldn't care.

But I don't ever think about it,
because you're off the map."

That's a real generator,
because it goes to that

chip on their shoulder...
That insecurity that,

"You do not respect us
or even understand us."

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Oakland, California—
crosswinds and...

NARRATOR:
From coast to coast,
in the 1930s,

rowing was one of the nation's
most popular sports.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
60,000 spectators see
the classic rowing field

in the far West.

NARRATOR:
Thousands of fans
attended regattas...

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
the Poughkeepsie Regatta.

And there they go.

NARRATOR:
where they cheered their
favorites from beaches, docks,

rooftops, ferries.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Going out on a
rough and windy

three-mile course
of Lake Washington.

NARRATOR:
And even open observation trains

that ran the length
of race courses.

The biggest race of the
'34 Poughkeepsie Championship

was the varsity competition, won
by the University of California,

the longtime
West Coast powerhouse.

But the Washington freshmen were
the revelation of the regatta,

capturing their
national collegiate title

by five boat lengths
over Syracuse.

WILLMAN:
It was almost like
it was effortless.

They came out of that sitting up
instead of gasping.

There was a huge amount
of press and speculation

of whether this was
an Olympic team.

NARRATOR: The New York Times
called the performance

of the Washington crew
"stunning" and "serene."

BROWN:
I think trust is the single
most important thing in rowing.

You really do become part of
something larger than yourself.

Every time you take a stroke,
you are counting on

everybody else in the boat
to be putting

his whole weight, full strength,
into that stroke.

That is only going to happen
if every man in that boat

trusts the others
on a very fundamental level.

NARRATOR:
The freshmen champions
returned to the shell house

as sophomores

to train for the upcoming
1935 spring racing season.

Most observers thought

they would be named
to the top varsity boat...

The crew that would give
Washington its best chance

to get to its first-ever
Olympics in Berlin

the following year.

But the idea that Joe Rantz
and the sophomores

were the boat to beat was deeply
resented by upperclassmen.

One of the more vocal dissenters
was Bobby Moch.

Just five feet seven
and 119 pounds,

Moch was a coxswain, tucked in
the rear of the racing shell,

where light weight
was an advantage.

A coxswain commanded the pace
and direction of the boat,

and ensured the rowers in front
of him were fully in concert.

A Phi Beta Kappa student,
Moch had endured a childhood

racked by asthma in a logging
town in southwestern Washington.

He took his seat
in the racing shell every day

the same way he approached
everything— set on defying

anyone who doubted him.

He was on the basketball team.

He constantly played sports.

He was very competitive.

He was very smart, but he did
not see himself as smart.

He saw himself as disciplined.

BROWN:
His strength in the boat
was this sort of attitude that,

"I'm in charge."

And that's exactly what Bob Moch
was so good at.

And Moch always had his chin up
a little bit,

and just exactly
what you want in a coxswain.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
With the Olympic games in view,

the University of Washington
crew gets the jump

on eastern oarsmen.

NARRATOR:
Like every other upperclassman,
for Bobby Moch, the central goal

of the 1935 season

was to find his way
into the varsity boat,

ahead of Joe Rantz
and the sophomores.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
While the icebound Easterners
work out in gymnasiums,

the Huskies pile into
their shells and shove off...

NARRATOR:
There was no relief

from the winter's long daily
practices, punishing workouts,

and countless time trials.

COHEN:
It's painful.

You're talking about
hours of work

at a relatively high heart rate.

You're pushing the limits of
your body every single day.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
pulling hard for coveted
seats in the varsity shell.

NARRATOR:
It was all overseen
by a coach who,

just a decade earlier, had been
a star Washington rower himself.

Al Ulbrickson had won
two national championships

as a Husky, but never got
to an Olympics.

As the team's coach,
he'd watched rival California

win gold medals at the 1928
and '32 Games.

BOB ERNST:
That's huge motivation
for a coach.

If you're a great athlete
and you don't make it

to the Olympics, and you don't
get a gold medal, then that...

that's a fire burning
all the time.

BROWN:
Al Ulbrickson was
a pretty hard man.

He was not at all communicative.

Sportswriters called him
the Dour Dane.

He was very stern.

So I don't think any of the boys
that rowed for him

felt real warm and fuzzy
about him.

NARRATOR:
The taciturn coach
appeared content

to fuel months of battle

between his rowers as the first
race of the season approached.

In the boathouse, confusion,
tension, and hostilities

between the sophomores
and upperclassmen escalated.

BROWN:
Ulbrickson would sometimes

just jerk boys out of boats
without giving an explanation.

Some of the kids
had a hard time with that.

Joe Rantz certainly did.

It made him very uncertain
about things.

PETER MALLORY:
Nobody challenged Ulbrickson.

He put the lineups
up on the chalkboard.

He barely said anything
in the launch.

It was very toxic—boats
not talking to one another.

MOCH:
My dad liked to play mind games

on the other...
primarily coxswains,

but also the guys that were...
were rowing,

if he could think of a way
to do it.

MICHAEL MOCH:
He wasn't liked
to start with at all.

And these guys were in the way

if they weren't going
to pull their oar.

And he was really pushy,
you know?

I mean, he...
this was going to happen.

COHEN:
There was this animosity
that led to a bare-knuckle

kind of environment.

There would be almost vicious
competition between the men.

BROWN:
There were shoving matches.

Feelings got very hurt.

Psychologically this was
a hard game that these kids

were involved in.

NARRATOR:
Ulbrickson waited until
after dinner the night before

the first race
of the 1935 season

to finally announce
his decision.

He named Rantz and the
sophomores the top varsity crew

over Moch and the more
experienced rowers on the team.

The next day, April 13,
the coach's faith was rewarded

when the sophomores
edged out a victory

at the annual
Pacific Coast Regatta,

a duel race against Cal.

But when training resumed,
Ulbrickson still had questions

about his top crew,

testing them relentlessly
in practice,

and watching them grow sloppy
and unpredictable.

Just before the
national championship,

Ulbrickson reversed himself.

He elevated Bobby Moch's crew
to the top boat,

and demoted the stunned
sophomores.

WILLMAN:
They had gotten themselves
to the place where it was

kind of easy to be demoralized.

And they didn't have
the kind of confidence

in each other that they
had to have

to be consistently competitive.

ANNOUNCER:
There they go, with seven
finely trained crews

churning the fog-shrouded waters
of the upper Hudson

in the supreme rowing test of
power, speed and coordination.

NARRATOR:
On June 18, 1935,
a blustery day in Poughkeepsie,

Bobby Moch took Washington
out to an early lead.

But Cal and the rest
of the field soon caught up.

RADIO ANNOUNCER:
California leads Washington
by a length

approaching the river bridge
at the three-mile mark.

NARRATOR:
Cal won its third straight
national championship...

RADIO ANNOUNCER:
In a surging drive,

the California Bears
nose out the Cornell shell by...

NARRATOR:
positioning themselves
as favorites to return

to the Olympics,
now just a year away.

The Huskies, meanwhile,
returned to Seattle a worn-out,

fragmented team.

Ulbrickson had gambled and lost.

Now, after the upheaval between
the sophomores and upperclassmen

they were all in danger
of missing out on the Olympics.

COHEN:
A good coach
creates the framework

for a team to trust each other.

And so there was a breakdown of
the trust in the shell house.

BROWN:
George Pocock was so much more
than a boat builder.

He really in many ways
was a sage.

And Pocock taught generations
of rowers at Washington

to approach rowing
as if it were a craft.

He said, "When I build a shell,
I leave a piece of my heart

in that shell."

"When you walk away from a race,
I want you to walk away

having left a piece
of your heart in that race."

He really believed that by
rowing as well as you could

you were lifting yourself up
and making yourself better.

And if you rowed well enough,
he said,

you were approaching perfection.

And if you approached
perfection,

you were approaching the divine.

NARRATOR:
Going into the 1936
rowing season,

George Pocock had been a fixture
at the University of Washington

for more than two decades.

He'd grown up in England
building boats with his father

at Eton, the prestigious
secondary school

on the Thames river,
the birthplace of the sport

of competitive rowing.

Within a few years
of his arrival in America,

Pocock set up shop
building racing shells

in the loft above
the Washington boathouse.

An accomplished oarsman as well,
Pocock became a valued advisor

to Washington coaches
along the way,

including Al Ulbrickson.

COHEN:
There was a very, very
strong connection there.

George was a man of few words
as well.

I can imagine Al Ulbrickson and
George Pocock in the launch,

and nothing being said
the entire time

they're out there except
for maybe two or three words.

But those two or three words
likely were very powerful,

and probably changed things
along the way.

NARRATOR:
With the Olympics
just months away,

Ulbrickson was determined
to put his mistakes

of the previous year behind him.

He made clear to his team

that the upcoming season would
be their most grueling yet,

and added a sixth day
of training to every week.

Every seat in the varsity boat
was up for grabs.

It was every man for himself.

There was one rower
whom Ulbrickson

approached differently; whose
raw potential he'd first spotted

in a high school gymnasium,
but who'd grown too erratic

to be depended upon... Joe Rantz.

BROWN:
Ulbrickson takes him
out of the boat.

The boat slows down.

Ulbrickson puts him
back in the boat.

The boat goes faster, but then
it goes slower the next day.

And he can't figure out
why Joe Rantz is so uneven.

So he finally asks
George Pocock.

WILLMAN:
George Pocock was almost like
a father figure.

He was somebody
who saw Dad's potential.

Dad was sinking
from boat to boat.

As somebody who had sort of been
a throwaway kind of person,

he found himself being
thrown away again.

BROWN:
He developed an attitude
that he had to do everything

his own way.

And that worked for him
living out in the woods.

But that was really a problem
for him when it came to crew.

Pocock really begins
to teach him

that if he wants to be great,
he needs to understand

that he's part of something
bigger than himself.

He needs to begin to trust.

MALLOR:
Going into '36,

this was it.

This was when he had to do it.

Ulbrickson was well aware
that he had to take advantage

of the enormous talent
from the '34 freshmen boat.

And he had to take advantage of
the enormous talent of Don Hume.

NARRATOR:
After just one season
on the team,

Don Hume was being talked about
as perhaps the best

Washington stroke oar...
The rower charged with keeping

the rhythm of the boat...
Since Al Ulbrickson himself.

The sophomore was not
physically imposing,

but he'd led his freshman boat
to resounding victories

the prior season.

BROWN:
He actually worked
in a pulp mill as a kid.

And there was an unfortunate
consequence of that.

Fumes in the mill
damaged his lungs.

So it made him very susceptible
to respiratory illnesses.

He had a very hard time
shaking them off.

COHEN:
Al Ulbrickson would have
preferred to have

a 200-pound guy in there

who could pull twice as hard
as Don Hume.

But Don Hume was special.

ERNST:
He had a natural feel
for the rhythm of the water

and how fast
the boat would move.

They don't have to be
the most powerful person,

and they don't have to be
the biggest person,

but they've got to have a sense
of what's moving the boat.

Don Hume would just do his job,
and all the guys

super respected him for that.

NARRATOR:
By mid-March, Hume was a regular
in the lineup that Ulbrickson

envisioned for his varsity boat.

In his daily logbook,
he added another name

he hadn't written for some time.

Over the next several practices,
the boat got faster.

BROWN:
Pocock's advice would work
for Joe in this boat.

That was a bunch of guys
that Joe could trust.

And Ulbrickson knew

at that point he had the boat
that he wanted to try to take

to Berlin.

NARRATOR: The varsity crew
was named four months

before the Olympics.

Bobby Moch was the coxswain,
Don Hume was the stroke oar,

with Joe Rantz and Shorty Hunt
seated behind him,

the powerful Stub McMillin
in the middle, then Johnny White

and Gordy Adam, Chuck Day,
and Roger Morris in the bow.

After so many months
of second guessing

and bruised egos,
the former boathouse adversaries

comprised a powerful
Washington crew.

In their first race together,
the Pacific Coast Regatta

in April, they accelerated
away from Cal and annihilated

the course record by 37 seconds.

"All were merged into
one smoothly working machine,"

the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
noted.

"They were, in fact,
a poem of motion,

a symphony of swinging blades."

COHEN:
Swing comes when you really
have that harmony,

synchronicity.

Eight hearts beating as one,
as George Pocock would say.

It's elusive.

It doesn't happen every day.

ERNST:
Swing, it's the sweet spot.

It's a perfect connection.

And the best teams

dream about having it
in the big races,

because then they know
they can't be touched.

NARRATOR:
In June, the national
championship

in Poughkeepsie loomed.

A few days before their race,
Ulbrickson gave them

the day off,

and the boys from Seattle
decided they would visit

one of the local residents.

BROWN:
They know that

President Roosevelt lives at
Hyde Park just up the river.

And they get it in their heads
that they're going to go visit

the president.

They find a gardener
who points it out to them.

They walk up and knock
on the door.

And one of the Roosevelt sons
comes to the door.

And he is himself a rower,
so he invites them in.

And for the next hour or so
they talk about rowing

sitting in
President Roosevelt's parlor.

One of the guys sits actually
in the chair that Roosevelt

sometimes delivers
his fireside chats from.

Johnny White writes a little
note in his diary that night...

"They sure have a swell place."

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
The historic
Poughkeepsie Regatta

draws seven varsity shells
to the starting line

and a crowd of spectators
to the sideline.

NARRATOR:
The national championship
was June 22.

Washington's strategy
was to exercise patience

in the four-mile race.

COHEN:
Don Hume

and Joe Rantz and
all of those guys,

Stub McMillin,
they all knew the plan...

They would row

the first two miles of that race
in cruise control.

And then they would start
to pick it up.

BROWN:
As the boats
are in their third mile,

Ulbrickson can't quite believe
what he's seeing,

because Bobby Moch
has got the boat four lengths

behind the leaders.

COHEN:
He's riding the train
with George Pocock

and he's going,
"Come on! Come on!

You guys got to go now!"

BROWN:
Moch continues

to hold the boat back.

And then, at the last
possible moment,

he finally leans in and tells
Don Hume to pick the pace up.

MALLORY:
Bobby Moch had faith
in his team.

He just stayed cool and calm,
and then just mowed them down.

RADIO ANNOUNCER:
The Huskies of Washington
proceed to sweep the river,

surging to victory to become the
ace candidate for the Olympics.

NARRATOR:
With reporters afterwards,
Ulbrickson praised his coxswain.

"I guess that little runt
knew what he was doing."

Two weeks later, Princeton,
New Jersey, was the site

of the Olympic Trials.

Despite everything
they'd already achieved,

the boys had to win
one more time to become

the first Washington crew
to represent the United States

in an Olympics.

The strategy, once again,
was to race from behind.

COHEN:
The Olympic trials
for Washington was probably

one of the best races
they ever rowed.

And people were rightly
intimidated

by the way they rowed.

You're sitting there going,
"Oh, oh, no.

"Washington is three lengths
back from us,

but they're going to come
eat us alive," you know?

"We've got to hold on,
we've got to hold on,

we've got to...
oh, no, here they come."

MALLORY:
And they waited a long time.

It was 400, 500 meters
from the end,

and Penn still had three
quarters of a length.

And then Moch said, "Let's go,"
and bam!

They just exploded
and went right through them.

NARRATOR:
Ulbrickson spoke to the
national press after the race.

"Why they won cannot be
attributed to individuals,"

he said.

He got to the heart
of the matter when he noted,

"Every man in the boat
had absolute confidence

in every one of his mates."

The crew of the
Washington University,

I want to congratulate you on
winning the championship

of American eight-oared crews.

(laughter, shouting)

NARRATOR:
On the morning of July 15,

two-and-a-half weeks before
the start of the Olympics,

the boys from Washington,
who had previously

only been on lakes and rivers,

began a journey across
the Atlantic Ocean.

The SS Manhattan luxury liner

was a 668-foot ship
that would transport

334 members of the U.S. Olympic
team to Germany.

And also a 62-foot
Pocock racing shell.

When they get on a boat
to cross the Atlantic,

they're all pinching themselves.

Their world had gone
very quickly from

the sawmill,
the edge of the forest,

to the biggest stage of all.

NARRATOR:
Over the ten-day crossing,

Don Hume, always prone
to respiratory infections,

began struggling with
a deep chest cold that persisted

as the ship took them through
the English Channel to Germany.

ERNST:
This was like going
to another planet.

These are guys

that if they want to know
where Germany is,

they're looking at
a cardboard globe.

BROWN:
They actually saw

a very clean,
well-scrubbed city,

very carefully laid out.

There were swastikas hanging
from every street corner.

There were banners everywhere.

But swastikas didn't yet mean
anything to Americans.

NARRATOR:
The opening ceremony
was held on August 1

at the newly built
sports stadium.

The hosts' objective
was not simply to welcome

the world to Berlin,

but to put on a show
of national unity and pride

unlike any the world
had ever seen.

To Adolf Hitler,

the Games were the ultimate
propaganda tool.

DAVID CLAY LARGE:
He was a very effective
propagandist.

And he was going to
use the Olympics

as his great show.

He was going to bring out
onto the world

this new healed Germany,
this reunified Germany,

a stronger Germany, but also,
he insisted, a peaceful Germany.

Meanwhile,

behind the scenes,
he was planning for war.

NARRATOR:
Hitler expected the German teams
would dominate the Games.

The rowing team that
the host nation brought

to the narrow lake, Langer-See,
was no exception.

MALLORY:
The German team
was extremely dominant.

Their government made it
a national priority

that their sports teams
should succeed.

They had clubs
all over the country

that were well coached,
well-funded.

LARGE:
They're given
uninterrupted training.

If they have jobs
they quit the jobs,

and they're sponsored
by the government.

EGAN:
The University of Washington,
the Americans, come in

as poor athletes from an
unknown part of the world.

Their ethic is because
these guys worked on farms

and crappy jobs.

There's sort of a purity
versus this artifice.

BROWN:
And the boys went out and just
sort of explored the streets.

And they quickly discovered
that whenever Germans

walk up to them
they would extend their hands,

give the Nazi salute and say,
"Heil Hitler."

So the boys didn't quite know
what to do about that.

So they took to walking up to
Germans, extending their hands

and saying, "Heil Roosevelt."

NARRATOR: Eight days before
the gold medal race,

Ulbrickson grounded his team.

They were rowing poorly
in workouts, and the chest cold

Don Hume had contracted
on the trip over

had gotten worse, not better.

COHEN:
Don Hume went from 170 pounds
to about 158 pounds

over that period of time.

It was an extensive amount
of weight loss.

BROWN:
He was very sick,
he had a high fever.

He had been kept in bed
for several days.

And going into the day
of the medal race,

Ulbrickson didn't think
that he could row.

NARRATOR:
On the morning
of the final race,

with Hume's fever rising
once again,

Ulbrickson announced
that he was going to remove

his stroke from the boat,
and replace him

with an alternate.

When he told the team, they
refused to leave Hume behind.

ERNST:
The guys

just absolutely could not
see themselves racing

without Don Hume
in the stroke seat.

He's the guy who's
leading the dance step.

And if it was a little bit
shaky, we'll make up for that.

BROWN:
They put it to him
almost as an ultimatum,

and that was
a very unusual thing.

Ulbrickson thought about it
for a bit, and he decided

this was a case where he had to
trust the instincts of the boys.

He was going to put
Don Hume in the boat.

They were going to win
the race for each other.

They had each other's backs.

NARRATOR: August 14, race day,
was chilly and rainy.

In the men's eights,
the marquee event,

the Americans faced a full slate
of intimidating opponents.

MALLORY:
George Pocock, being a Brit
himself, was rightly concerned

about the British entry.

They were full of Oxford and
Cambridge boat race veterans.

So it was an all-star crew.

They'd won in '08, '12.

They had been second in '20.

They were always
on the premises.

The Italians were a group of
longshoremen from Livorno.

They had been together as a team
for more than ten years.

They were big, strong guys.

They were literally the most
experienced crew in the field.

The German team
won the first five races.

They were the class
of the Olympics.

LARGE:
The Germans wanted desperately
to win the heavyweight eights...

Very important, because that was
the most prestigious

of all the rowing contests.

And they knew the course like
the backs of their hands.

So they had a huge advantage
in that regard.

NARRATOR:
The Germans had another
distinct advantage in the race,

the best lane assignment—
Even if it appeared

to have been dubiously
determined.

BROWN:
Although the Americans had
the fastest qualifying time,

and the Brits had turned in the
second fastest qualifying time,

they were mysteriously
assigned lanes five and six

out in the windiest part
of the racecourse.

Italy and Germany had turned in
relatively slow

qualifying times.

They were assigned lanes one and
two, protected from the wind.

How they would end up
with the best lanes

and the teams that had
won their heats would end up

in the worst lanes,
there's nothing to explain that.

NARRATOR:
At a quarter past 6:00
in the evening in Germany,

it was still morning
back in Washington.

As the state and much
of the nation listened in

on their radios,

the Americans paddled
to the start line.

RADIO ANNOUNCER:
It's a very interesting sight
to be here

and describe this to you.

The Washington crew is probably
the slowest starting crew

in the world... it gives
everybody heart failure.

BROWN:
The crowd is already chanting,
"Deutschland, Deutschland,

Deutschland."

They don't actually hear the
call of the start of the race.

COHEN:
The Washington crew
had a horrible start.

Horrible.

They were thrashing.

RADIO ANNOUNCER:
I can see that Italy is leading,
Germany is second,

Switzerland third.

COHEN:
They were a quarter way
through the race,

and they were behind the field.

They were facing the wind
and the chop.

MALLORY:
Suddenly, Don Hume
seemed to go into a trance.

RADIO ANNOUNCER:
The American crew appears to be
fairly well in the rear.

BROWN:
Don Hume hasn't been responding
to Bobby Moch's

calls to him
to pick up the rate.

WILLMAN:
Bobby Moch knew that
if something didn't change,

everything was lost.

RADIO ANNOUNCER:
The United States
dragging along.

Not in the first three.

BROWN:
Suddenly Don Hume

pops his head up and starts
rowing beautifully.

And the boat explodes forward.

RADIO ANNOUNCER:
The United States is beginning
to pick up quite rapidly now.

That's good old Washington,
all rushed.

COHEN:
Within a thousand meters,

they started to move back
on the field.

RADIO ANNOUNCER:
Washington crew is driving hard
on the outside of the course.

MALLORY:
There were people

screaming down on them.

It must have been
absolutely deafening.

WILLMAN:
Nobody could hear him.

Even Don Hume

couldn't hear him 15 inches

in front of him
with a megaphone.

He did the only thing he could,
which was start whacking

on the side of the shell.

He could go (imitates sound).

RADIO ANNOUNCER:
There is not
one length of difference

between the first five crews!

ERNST:
They had to fight and claw
and drag that boat.

RADIO ANNOUNCER:
The United States is in front
with 50 meters to go!

ERNST:
It was a total gut check.

RADIO ANNOUNCER:
40 meters to go, and they have
half a boat length on Italy!

20 meters to go.

Ten meters to go.

And the United States wins,
with Italy second

and Germany third,

Great Britain fourth,

and Hungary fifth.

And Don Hume, the very light
stroke on the American crew,

who has lost something like
12 or 15 pounds,

stroked that great crew
from the Northwest

to the outstanding victory
of the Olympic games.

ERNST:
It would have been really,
really easy

to lose.

But I'll tell you what...

They were kids that were tough.

They were used to working

in tough conditions,
and they were used to paying

a lot physically
to accomplish a goal.

BROWN:
Al Ulbrickson was watching

from a balcony nearby
with George Pocock.

And he fought his way through
the crowd trying to get

to the boys
to congratulate them.

NARRATOR:
A few moments later, Ulbrickson
told a reporter that his boys

were "the finest I ever saw
seated in a shell.

And I've seen some
corking boatloads."

BROWN:
Mostly, they were very proud of
not having let one another down.

I think for Joe Rantz,
winning that gold medal,

I think after all he'd
been through,

he knew he was valuable,

and he wasn't the disposable boy
he had once been.

BROWN:
Every one of them also had
a measure of humility.

And that humility was
the gateway through which

they were able to
approach one another

and start building
the bonds of trust

that really made them into the
great crew that they became.

COHEN:
There is this element
of redemption, but there's also

this element of achieving a goal
through trust and brotherhood.

EGAN:
They were considered rubes
from the far West taking on

the elite.

Reaching in, finding something.

The coming together from those
disparate backgrounds,

hunger for some dignity
in a world that wasn't giving

these boys dignity.

I love the fact that
they spoiled the script.

Someone needs to stop Clearway Law.
Public shouldn't leave reviews for lawyers.