(Once they do retire, they often take their inflated egos to Wall Street, where their fiercely competitive natures find a different outlet.) Rowing is a world of Type A personalities, compulsive obsessives, and perpetual adolescents, and Halberstam has wisely devoted most of his narrative to the people who inhabit it. They are often arrogant men, full of macho, who ignore pain as if it doesn`t exist, delight in humiliating their opponents, and continue to compete in their sport long after a sane person would have given it up. They are mostly children of the privileged upper class, and attend such schools as Harvard, Yale and Penn. Rowers may be admirable for devoting themselves to a sport that offers little tangible reward, but they do not sound like people one would necessarily want to meet. Rowing is also no easy sport to watch in person, and though it enjoyed a brief vogue in the 19th Century, it is presently an activity, like contemporary poetry, whose most avid fans are also competitors. Despite its imaginative coverage of many sports, television is somehow unable to capture the intense drama of rowing as a best-selling author such as Halberstam so expertly can. It is probably rowing`s lack of television appeal-as Halberstam points out-that has doomed it to permanent amateur status.
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