Four Golds for a Country That Stole Its Land from the Sea

No es cosa de universidades privadas;

It's not a private university thing;

es cosa de la ciudad.

it's a city thing.

So when the Dutch showed up in Amsterdam to race, they weren't just racing at home, they were racing in the literal water their grandparents learned to navigate.

Y con el apoyo de un público que entiende el deporte.

And with the support of a crowd that understands the sport.

No es como cuando pones un partido de criquet ante un estadio lleno de gente que no sabe qué está viendo.

It's not like putting a cricket match before a stadium full of people who don't know what they're watching.

Los aficionados neerlandeses saben distinguir una salida perfecta de una mediocre.

Dutch fans can tell a perfect start from a mediocre one.

Eso ejerce una presión distinta sobre los rivales.

That exerts a different kind of pressure on opponents.

Ten total medals.

Four gold.

Who were the other nations in the mix?

El remo de alto nivel es, históricamente, un deporte europeo con presencia fuerte de Nueva Zelanda y Australia.

High-level rowing is, historically, a European sport with a strong presence from New Zealand and Australia.

Gran Bretaña lleva décadas siendo potencia, especialmente tras las reformas de financiación al deporte olímpico que introdujeron después del desastre de Atlanta en 1996.

Great Britain has been a powerhouse for decades, especially after the sports funding reforms they introduced after the Atlanta disaster in 1996.

Alemania siempre está ahí.

Germany is always there.

Romania tiene una tradición enorme que muchos desconocen.

Romania has an enormous tradition that many people don't know about.

Romania.

That's one I didn't have on my radar.

Why Romania?

El régimen de Ceaușescu invirtió masivamente en deportes donde Romania podía competir con el bloque occidental sin gastar fortunas en infraestructura.

The Ceaușescu regime invested massively in sports where Romania could compete with the Western bloc without spending fortunes on infrastructure.

El remo era perfecto: necesitas agua, botes y disciplina.

Rowing was perfect: you need water, boats and discipline.

Y Romania tiene el delta del Danubio, una de las redes fluviales más densas de Europa.

And Romania has the Danube Delta, one of the densest river networks in Europe.

Construyeron una maquinaria de élite que sobrevivió al colapso del comunismo.

They built an elite machine that survived the collapse of communism.

That's the same logic East Germany used, actually.

You find the sports where the input-output ratio works in your favor, where you can manufacture champions without a hundred-million-dollar stadium.

Exactamente.

Exactly.

Y el remo tiene esa virtud extraña: es un deporte brutalmente físico, de los más exigentes del mundo en términos de consumo de oxígeno, pero no requiere ni balones ni canchas ni grandes inversiones de equipamiento.

And rowing has that strange virtue: it's a brutally physical sport, one of the most demanding in the world in terms of oxygen consumption, but it requires neither balls nor courts nor major equipment investment.

Requiere agua y voluntad.

It requires water and willpower.

Eso lo hace accesible para sistemas de Estado que quieren resultados olímpicos sin recursos infinitos.

That makes it accessible for state systems that want Olympic results without infinite resources.

The oxygen consumption thing, can you put a number on that?

Because I've heard rowers compared to cyclists and marathoners and I've never quite understood where they actually land.

Los remeros de élite tienen algunos de los valores de VO2 máximo más altos jamás registrados en deportistas humanos, comparables a los de los ciclistas del Tour.

Elite rowers have some of the highest VO2 max values ever recorded in human athletes, comparable to Tour de France cyclists.

Pero a diferencia del ciclismo, en el remo trabajas con la parte superior e inferior del cuerpo simultáneamente durante seis o siete minutos sin pausa.

But unlike cycling, in rowing you work the upper and lower body simultaneously for six or seven minutes without pause.

Es como si un ciclista tuviera que pedalear con los brazos al mismo tiempo.

It's as if a cyclist had to pedal with his arms at the same time.

El corazón de un remero de élite es literalmente más grande que el de la mayoría de las personas.

The heart of an elite rower is literally larger than that of most people.

Six to seven minutes.

That's the race duration for the standard two-thousand-meter course, right?

Which is part of why it's such a hard sell on television.

There's no score, there are no obvious dramatic reversals, it's eight people suffering in absolute silence for six minutes.

Y eso es precisamente lo que lo hace fascinante para quien lo entiende.

And that's precisely what makes it fascinating for those who understand it.

No hay lugar donde esconderse.

There's nowhere to hide.

En el fútbol, un jugador mediocre puede pasar cuarenta minutos sin tocar el balón.

In football, a mediocre player can spend forty minutes without touching the ball.

En el remo, si uno de los ocho remeros pierde el ritmo durante tres paladas, el bote entero lo paga.

In rowing, if one of the eight rowers loses the rhythm for three strokes, the entire boat pays for it.

La transparencia es brutal.

The transparency is brutal.

Now I'm thinking about Amsterdam as a venue specifically.

Because that city is, in a very literal sense, built on water.

You walk across bridges to get anywhere.

Was the course actually in the city?

Los grandes campeonatos de remo generalmente requieren un lago artificial o un canal recto de dos kilómetros sin corrientes ni interferencias.

Major rowing championships generally require an artificial lake or a straight two-kilometer canal without currents or interference.

Ámsterdam tiene el Bosbaan, un canal construido específicamente en 1937 para los Juegos Olímpicos que se celebraron allí ese año.

Amsterdam has the Bosbaan, a canal built specifically in 1937 for the Olympic Games held there that year.

Es una de las instalaciones de remo más antiguas y respetadas del mundo.

It is one of the oldest and most respected rowing facilities in the world.

Wait, Amsterdam hosted the Olympics in 1937?

En 1928, Fletcher.

In 1928, Fletcher.

Los Juegos de 1928.

The 1928 Games.

El Bosbaan se construyó después, en 1937, anticipando los Juegos de 1940 que nunca se celebraron por la guerra.

The Bosbaan was built afterward, in 1937, in anticipation of the 1940 Games that never took place because of the war.

Así que es una instalación construida para unos Juegos Olímpicos que Hitler canceló antes de que pudieran empezar.

So it's a facility built for an Olympic Games that Hitler canceled before they could begin.

That detail lands harder than I expected.

A venue built for a Games that never happened, still being used ninety years later.

Y eso dice algo sobre la relación de los holandeses con la infraestructura.

And that says something about the Dutch relationship with infrastructure.

Construyen para generaciones, no para ciclos políticos.

They build for generations, not for political cycles.

El mismo impulso que llevó a sus antepasados a construir diques que tardaban décadas en completarse los lleva a construir una pista de remo que sigue siendo competitiva un siglo después.

The same impulse that led their ancestors to build dikes that took decades to complete leads them to build a rowing course that is still competitive a century later.

So what does a dominant performance at the World Championships actually mean going forward?

There are Olympics in 2028, Los Angeles.

Does this translate?

El remo olímpico tiene una estructura diferente a los campeonatos mundiales.

Olympic rowing has a different structure from the world championships.

En los Juegos hay un número limitado de plazas por disciplina y por país, así que no basta con ser el mejor: tienes que clasificarte correctamente.

At the Games there are a limited number of places per discipline and per country, so it's not enough to be the best: you have to qualify correctly.

Los mundiales sirven en parte como torneo de clasificación olímpica.

The worlds serve partly as an Olympic qualifying tournament.

Así que estas medallas no son solo simbólicas;

So these medals are not just symbolic;

muchas de ellas abren puertas directas hacia Los Ángeles.

many of them open direct doors to Los Angeles.

And Los Angeles presents an interesting problem for a rowing venue, because the city is not exactly famous for its rivers.

Es un problema que ya resolvieron: la sede será el lago de Perris, en el condado de Riverside, a unos noventa kilómetros de Los Ángeles.

It's a problem they've already solved: the venue will be Lake Perris, in Riverside County, about ninety kilometers from Los Angeles.

No es exactamente el Sena, pero cumple los requisitos técnicos.

It's not exactly the Seine, but it meets the technical requirements.

Lo irónico es que estás llevando un deporte con raíces profundas en el agua europea a una región donde el agua es el recurso más escaso y más disputado del continente.

The irony is that you're taking a sport with deep roots in European water to a region where water is the scarcest and most contested resource on the continent.

That irony will be lost on exactly nobody who covers the American West.

Hay algo poético ahí, aunque quizás no de la manera que los organizadores quisieran.

There's something poetic there, though perhaps not in the way the organizers would want.

Pero volviendo al punto principal: lo que los Países Bajos demostraron esta semana en Ámsterdam no es solo que son buenos remeros.

But returning to the main point: what the Netherlands demonstrated this week in Amsterdam is not just that they are good rowers.

Es que han construido un ecosistema completo alrededor del deporte, desde los canales del barrio hasta el podio mundial, y eso no se improvisa.

It's that they have built a complete ecosystem around the sport, from the neighborhood canals to the world podium, and that cannot be improvised.

Ecosistema.

That's actually the word, isn't it.

You can't parachute a rowing culture into existence.

No, y eso conecta con algo que debería preocupar a las federaciones olímpicas que quieren globalizar el deporte.

No, and that connects to something that should worry the Olympic federations that want to globalize the sport.

El remo sigue siendo mayoritariamente blanco, mayoritariamente europeo o anglosajón, y mayoritariamente de clase media-alta.

Rowing remains predominantly white, predominantly European or Anglo-Saxon, and predominantly upper-middle class.

Cambiar eso requeriría décadas de inversión en infraestructura en lugares donde el agua no es un recurso deportivo sino un recurso de supervivencia.

Changing that would require decades of investment in infrastructure in places where water is not a sporting resource but a survival resource.

That's a harder conversation than the medal table suggests.

You watch the Dutch celebrate four golds and it looks like a success story, but it also looks like a very particular kind of success story that belongs to a very particular part of the world.

Así es.

That's right.

Aunque diría que el propio remo es consciente de esa tensión.

Although I would say that rowing itself is aware of that tension.

En los últimos años la World Rowing Federation ha hecho esfuerzos por incorporar equipos de África y Asia, con resultados modestos pero reales.

In recent years the World Rowing Federation has made efforts to incorporate teams from Africa and Asia, with modest but real results.

Eritrea, por ejemplo, ha producido remeros de nivel continental.

Eritrea, for example, has produced continental-level rowers.

No aparecen en el medallero de Ámsterdam, pero están en el mapa.

They don't appear in the Amsterdam medal table, but they are on the map.

Eritrea is an interesting case, actually, because that country has punched so far above its weight in endurance sports for so long.

Something about altitude, about training conditions, about what poverty does to your relationship with physical effort.

Eso merecería un episodio entero.

That would deserve an entire episode.

Pero sí, la paradoja del remo es que físicamente podrías producir remeros en cualquier parte del mundo donde haya agua, que es casi en todas partes.

But yes, the paradox of rowing is that physically you could produce rowers anywhere in the world where there is water, which is almost everywhere.

El cuello de botella no es el talento;

The bottleneck is not talent;

es el acceso a la tecnología, a los entrenadores, a los botes de fibra de carbono que cuestan lo que muchas familias ganan en un año.

it's access to technology, to coaches, to carbon fiber boats that cost what many families earn in a year.

Which brings us back to the Dutch winning in Amsterdam being, in a way, the expected outcome of a system that has been investing correctly for a very long time.

Sí.

Yes.

Y hay algo que me parece admirable en eso, aunque no soy muy dado a los elogios fáciles.

And there's something I find admirable in that, even though I'm not prone to easy praise.

Aquí no hay un golpe de suerte ni una figura carismática que arrastró a todos consigo.

There is no stroke of luck here, no charismatic figure who carried everyone along.

Hay décadas de trabajo silencioso, de clubes locales, de entrenadores que cobraron sueldos modestos, de niños que aprendieron a remar antes de saber montar en bicicleta.

There are decades of quiet work, of local clubs, of coaches who earned modest salaries, of children who learned to row before learning to ride a bicycle.

Y el resultado se ve en el medallero.

And the result shows in the medal table.

You used a phrase a few minutes ago that I keep turning over: 'no hay lugar donde esconderse.' There's nowhere to hide.

That stuck.

¿Qué pasa con ella?

What about it?

Is that construction, 'no hay lugar donde,' one of those cases where English and Spanish carve up the territory differently?

Because in English you'd just say 'nowhere to hide,' but yours has this spatial weight to it, it's almost architectural.

Sí, y es porque en español necesitas el 'donde' para anclar el verbo.

Yes, and it's because in Spanish you need the 'donde' to anchor the verb.

Puedes decir 'no hay dónde esconderse' o 'no hay lugar donde esconderse';

You can say 'no hay dónde esconderse' or 'no hay lugar donde esconderse';

las dos funcionan.

both work.

El inglés puede comprimir eso en un adverbio, 'nowhere', que ya lleva todo el significado.

English can compress that into one adverb, 'nowhere', which already carries all the meaning.

El español lo despliega, necesita el lugar y luego el movimiento hacia él.

Spanish unfolds it, it needs the place and then the movement toward it.

So in a weird way Spanish is actually being more precise.

It's saying: there is no location, and if there were a location, you could not hide in it.

Two separate thoughts fused into one phrase.

Básicamente sí.

Basically yes.

Y ese 'donde' subordinado es lo que en gramática se llama una cláusula de relativo con antecedente negativo.

And that subordinate 'donde' is what in grammar is called a relative clause with a negative antecedent.

Suena técnico, pero lo usas constantemente sin pensarlo: 'no tengo con quién hablar', 'no hay nada que hacer', 'no conozco a nadie que sepa esto'.

It sounds technical, but you use it constantly without thinking about it: 'I have nobody to talk to', 'there's nothing to do', 'I don't know anyone who knows this'.

Siempre que niegas la existencia de algo, el español te pide que especifiques qué rol habría tenido ese algo.

Whenever you negate the existence of something, Spanish asks you to specify what role that something would have played.

So the sport and the grammar share the same logic.

No hiding in the boat, no shortcuts in the sentence.

Eso es exactamente el tipo de conexión que un periodista haría.

That's exactly the kind of connection a journalist would make.

Pero sí, guárdalo.

But yes, keep it.

Es una de esas estructuras que, una vez que la ves, empiezas a encontrarla en todas partes.

It's one of those structures that, once you see it, you start finding it everywhere.