The book The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown, which tells the story of a nine-person crew team from the University of Washington that won a gold medal at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, offers an especially vivid description: And he came to understand how those almost mystical bonds of trust and affection, if nurtured correctly, might lift a crew above the ordinary sphere, transport it to a place where nine boys somehow became one thing—a thing that could not quite be defined, a thing that was so in tune with the water and the earth and the sky above that, as they rowed, effort was replaced
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