I’ve been in a fair few races where our prospects of winning have been thwarted by someone catching a crab. Now I know it’s only human to feel a bit, ahem, annoyed with the person who messes up, but this strikes me as a reaction too far:
Now go back and watch it again, and this time take a close look at the man at no. six. When seven flies back into his lap, he takes both hands, hurls seven bodily out of the boat and carries on seamlessly with the next stroke, without even missing a beat (and leaving him to take his chances across a lane of racing eights).
I’m desperate to know what happened next. Are they all still talking to each other? Did the seven man survive? What was the cox saying? Really hoping someone who knows them might pop up and tell me.
The moral of the story, of course, is to be really, really nice to the person who sits behind you. If you catch a crab (and remember, even elite rowers occasionally do), you want the man behind you to catch you.
