Olympic Generations 1984

Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, August 11, 2004

I n 1931, the city of Edmonds erected a sign at 168th and Highway 99 that carried a message foretelling the city’s future.

“Gateway to the Olympics,” read the sign that, shamefully, didn’t make it to 1984.

The sign was obviously a reference to the Olympic Mountains, but twenty years ago its significance would have taken on an entirely different meaning.

In 1984, when the Los Angeles Summer Games brought together the United States for 16 days of glitz and athletic competition, tiny little Edmonds nearly stole the show.

There were three medal-winning athletes from Edmonds at the 1984 Games, two others who did not place, and four more who later moved to the area.

In total, nine Olympians who have lived in or around Edmonds were at the 1984 Summer Games. And that doesn’t even include Rosalynn Sumners, a silver medal figure skater from Edmonds who competed in the Winter Games that year.

“It must be something in the water,” 1984 silver medalist Alan Forney joked recently.

And he was half right.

Most of Edmonds’ Olympians spent the majority of their time on the water.

In addition to boxer Robert Shannon and runner Regina Joyce (who lives in nearby Lynnwood), Edmonds boasts a gold-medal sailor (Steve Erickson) and six members of the 1984 rowing team.

Forney, John Stillings and Susan Broome all grew up in Edmonds, while Paul Enquist, Jan Harville and U.S. coach Bob Ernst eventually moved there.

Most left Los Angeles with medals, while others took only heartache.

Some were weighed down by both.

Paul Enquist

The videotape is a bit grainier now, its image faded a bit over the past 20 years. Paul Enquist sits in his Edmonds home and watches for the umpteenth time as he and partner Brad Alan Lewis row to a gold medal in the 1984 double sculls final.

When the exciting part of the tape is over – after the American duo has overcome an early deficit to pass a team from Belgium just before the finish line – Enquist sees his own image on the screen and jokes about the 45 pounds he’s found over the years.

Then the screen shows two jubilant 28-year-olds with gold medals in hand.

“I still can’t believe I got one of those things,” the 48-year-old Enquist says from his couch.

The ride to a gold medal was so amazing that it has been chronicled in two different books: Lewis’ “Assault on Lake Casitas,” and David Halberstam’s “The Amateurs.”

But the most amazing part is what has – or, rather, hasn’t – happened in the subsequent 20 years.

The U.S. men’s rowing team, which earned a gold medal in every Olympic Games between 1920 and 1964, has won only one in the subsequent 36 years.

That one belonged to Enquist and Lewis.

“It absolutely amazes me every Olympics that (the Americans) haven’t won another one,” Enquist said. “I can’t explain it.”

Enquist was so certain that his 1984 gold medal would be overshadowed by the Americans’ next race – the four-oared shell – that he says he told Lewis: “We better talk to (the media) fast, because after the next race, nobody will care about us.”

The colorful Lewis and the laid-back Enquist were an odd pair from the start, and they made an even less likely duo to bring home gold.

They started sculling together in 1983, when they rowed to a surprising sixth-place finish at the world championships in Germany.

After the finals of that regatta, Lewis opted to start training for the single sculls, while Enquist and John Biglow began rowing as a doubles tandem. Biglow also entered the Olympic trials in single sculls, where he barely beat Lewis en route to a berth on the national team.

That left Enquist and Lewis wondering what to do next. Both were invited to the double sculls tryouts, but did not make the cut. With three weeks to go before the official double scull trials, they joined forces again and eventually challenged the national team for a spot on the Olympic squad.

Enquist and Lewis surprised the national champions in a challenge race, earning their unlikely spot in the Olympics.

“We were kind of the black sheep coming in,” Enquist said. “We did things our own way. That’s how Brad is, and sometimes that offends people.”

But their pre-race preparations paid off, as the U.S. duo moved into the finals with second- and first-place finishes during the preliminaries.

The final race was an uphill battle after the other five teams broke out to early leads. Enquist, a Ballard product who moved to Edmonds in 1987, recalls looking at an on-boat device that tracked pace and feeling that the U.S. team was in good shape despite a large deficit.

Midway through the 2,000-meter race, the Americans had pulled into the pack of boats that trailed Belgium by at least one length. Over the final 200 meters, only Belgium and the U.S. were in the hunt for gold. Quite simply, Enquist and Lewis had more left in the tank when the finish line approached.

“The last 35 or 40 strokes, we were in overdrive,” Enquist said. “And they just folded.”

As the boats entered the final 250 meters, with the Americans making their move, television commentator Steve Gladstone remarked: “This would be a tremendous upset.”

The real upset is how long that gold medal has gone unmatched by American men.

John Stillings

At the top of a stairway in their North Seattle home, John and Betsy Beard Stillings allow their yesterdays to dangle for all to see.

There, the couple has attached an oar, perpendicular to the ceiling, where they have hung all their rowing medals. There are nearly 100 of them, more than 75 percent of which are gold. Their shine has been tarnished by years, yet one seems to stick out more than the others.

John Stillings still cringes when he walks by that silver medal from the 1984 Olympic Games. Twenty years later, he still feels somehow responsible for not bringing home gold.

According to Stillings, U.S. coach Dietrich Rose altered the team’s strategy the morning of the medal race. He told Stillings, the coxswain, to hold off on the final surge until the last 650 meters – 100 later than usual.

The British team, which trailed by two boat lengths halfway through the race, took advantage. The Brits started to push at 750 meters, then got a rush of adrenaline when the U.S. boat suddenly came into reach. Great Britain, led by a legendary rower named Steve Redgrave, edged out Stillings and the Americans by 1.64 seconds at the finish.

Following his coach’s directions, Stillings only watched while the British team made its move.

“I guess I could have overruled him,” Stillings said last month of a German-Canadian man who coached the U.S. Olympic team that year. “That really haunted me for a long, long time. If you have a chance, you go for broke.”

Stillings estimates that he has won 70 percent of the races he’s coxed, and he has the medals to prove it.

But the one he can’t get out of his mind is the silver he got at his lone Olympic Games.

“I’ve wondered what kind of results you would get,” he said, “if you polled the American athletes and asked them: ‘If you had a chance to go for broke and win the gold, at the risk of not getting a medal at all, would you do it?’ I bet 90 percent would. I would think that’s what being an American is about.”

Still looking to atone for that loss, Stillings returned to crew in 2002 and competed with the national team last year at the Pan Am Games. Although he wasn’t invited to the Olympic tryout, the 49-year-old Meadowdale High School product believes he has a chance to go to Beijing in 2008.

”’Don’t part with your illusions,’” Stillings said, quoting Mark Twain. “‘When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.’”

Alan Forney

Alan Forney also won silver in 1984, but his medal has a different meaning altogether. Forney will always look at his medal with pride, because there was a time when it looked like he would never get the chance.

A 1978 graduate of Woodway High School, Forney barely survived the cut from 120 to 24 rowers, advancing only when he beat another competitor in a head-to-head contest on the ergo machine for the 24th spot.

With 12 spots to be had among the four- and eight-man coxless boats, Forney was on the outside looking in.

“I could see where I was on the ladder,” Forney said, “and it wasn’t in the top 12.”

The team went to Europe for a series of exhibition races, and Forney wasn’t getting a chance to row. With just two races left in the European tour, Forney approached the men’s coach and asked what was going on.

Coach Kris Korzeniowski gave him a chance in the four-man boat, trying a new combination of rowers that had never been used together before. The new crew went out and beat a Russian team for the first time in more than a decade. In its next race, the American four beat the East Germans for the first time in almost as long.

After that, the U.S. four-man crew was set, with Forney in the mix.

That group went on to win an improbable silver medal, losing to the heavily favored New Zealand team by less than three seconds.

“We just ran out of race course,” Forney said of the final race. “We were reeling them in.”

It wasn’t enough for a gold medal, but Forney is content with silver.

“To be a part of the Olympic experience was quite a ride,” Forney said. “And then to win a medal was icing on the cake.”

Jan Harville

Not all of the U.S. rowers that year brought home hardware.

Some of the 1984 Olympians were able to enjoy the experience for what it was – whether they won a medal or not.

Jan Harville, an Edmonds resident and the former crew coach at the University of Washington, just missed out on glory that year. While rowing in the four-oared shell, her U.S. team took fourth – .29 seconds from a bronze medal.

“I felt a little disappointed (not to medal), but I wasn’t disappointed in how we did,” Harville said. “We raced a good race, but (the bronze medalist Australians) just raced a little better.”

Harville had a unique experience in that she had originally made the 1980 Olympic team in the eight-oar boat, only to have that opportunity slip through her fingers because of a U.S. boycott. Four years later, she was at the Games again, in the less prestigious four-oar boat.

The eights won gold in 1984, while Harville and the fours missed out on a medal.

“(The pain) didn’t last too long,” said Harville, who returned to the Games as an assistant coach in 1996. “You’re disappointed for a few days, and then you go on with your life.”

Susan Broome, a 1977 graduate of Edmonds High School, was also a member of the 1984 Olympic rowing team, although as an alternate. She did not compete in Los Angeles, but returned in 1988 as a member of the U.S. team that finished sixth in the eight-oared race.

When it comes to Olympic experience, no one in Edmonds can match that of Bob Ernst. The UW crew coach went to the 1976, ‘84 and ‘88 Games as a coach, and has only the memories to show for it. Like Harville and Broome, he did not get a medal for his efforts – even though Ernst coached a number of medal-winning boats.

“Olympic medals are so special, and athletes put in a lifetime just to earn one,” Ernst said. “Honestly? I’d feel guilty if I’d have gotten one (as a coach).”