Yankeerunner wrote:
A.) The first Huh? came at those dinner tables. He seemed somewhat clueless about simple things like drag factor and raved about how much he was learning. I suppose that doesn't seem all that unusual, since we all started that way. But he was a guy with a 6:01.5 who got the free trip based an assumption that he was one of the most likely of all the ergers in America to win a gold medal in his division. One of the reasons often given for belief in his scores is that he was twice observed by qualified people in his USIRT trials. With all the time at the boathouse and training to reach 6:01.5 and observations by USIRT people he learned next to nothing compared to what he learned in a couple of minutes at the dinner table? Possible, I suppose, but unlikely, I believe.
Somewhere on the old forum, he mentioned that he was self taught, and got alot of coaching from Lisa Schlenker and Jamie Schroeder after BIRC.
B.) BIRC. Something just didn't seem right. It was just a subjective feeling, but it didn't LOOK like a 6:01 guy on the erg (guys like Nik Fleming, Tony Larkman & Chris Rushton did) and the big screen was showing 1:37's (6:28 pace) before the back injury. Still, you want to believe. Maybe just a diamond in the rough. If he's legit we'll be hearing from him in the future.
Less than two months later his profile notes that he broke 6:00. A 5:56.1 on January 8, 2003 that ended up being the only non-race time in the top 18 30-39 Hwts for the year. And he entered a race in California. Great. We will get to see the potential come to fruition. Then,
See comments from 'A'.
C.) He races and doesn't even break 7:00, let alone 6:00. Cognition is chipping away at Emotion. The report is that he was sick. Maybe he is extraordinarily unlucky.
I also remember reading that he had the flu that day, but raced anyway. Not a bad time for puking your guts up all day.
D.) Did not Start at the European Championship. Slipped in the shower just before. Shucks! Not only extraordinarily unlucky but mega-extraordinarily unlucky. Cognition overwhelms Emotion. Maybe it's the worst case of stage fright in sports history. That's about the most optimistic explanation that some of us can muster and still hope that this great guy is what he claims to be.
No comment on this one. Does sound like a case of stage fright.
E.) that he cried when he saw Graham's time because he KNEW he would have won instead. The gall. A guy with a 100% failure rate in public appearances raining on the parade of a worthy champion. I've never seen a more blatant cry for attention. When I didn't support him he played the loyalty card to try to make me feel guilty, complaining that I wasn't supporting a fellow American. By now his privately rowed PB was down to 5:49.1, ahead of James Cracknell and just slightly behind Matthew Pinsent as 2nd for the year in the 30-39 Hwt rankings. He apparently figured that was sufficient to claim superiority over Benton and question his worthiness as champion. I seemed to be pretty much alone in my view though. I acknowledge that some of my friends who remember that episode don’t see it as I do. But I don’t know how anyone who has looked at the faces of their fellow competitors at CRASH-B’s can see it any other way. I wish Chippy and Taffy had been around then and maybe things could have been nipped there.
If I remember his comment on this correctly, he had a 'smiley' face and a 'winky' face. This would suggest to me that he was joking.
F.) some "previously done but unrecorded meters" were found at the last minute to sweep him into first place in quantity as well as quality.
No comment on this one. Who knows what was going on?
G.) The Olympic Gold medalist at the top of his athletic career, presumably training about as hard and as long as is believed possible without breaking down. On the other hand we have a 40+ age-group erger training at a higher volume, doing serious weight training, holding down a full-time job, having family duties to a wife and child, being one of the most prolific posters on the forum, maintaining email correspondence and support to his fellow ergers, and doing times that are faster than what Olympic champions have done. Day after day, year round, year after year. Possible?, maybe. Likely?, I seriously doubt it.
Ranger puts in more time than he does, and nobody is giving him crap about it. So why give DA crap about it?
H.) Dwayne and only Dwayne refused to use his, saying that he donated it to his gym, thereby sidestepping any attempt by C2 to verify what he did. No one knew at that time that the PM3 could be fooled. He wasn’t singled out as a potential cheat. It wasn’t an issue of his honor being questioned. All team members were sent the PM3 for verification. But he chose to keep his scores unverified, and that seems suspicious to some of us.
No comment on this one.
I.)Last summer he traveled from the southern part of the United States to Edmonton in Canada for the water rowing Masters races. At that sport he is at best mediocre. His boats were not close to winning and his times were beaten by boats with older lightweights in them whose 2kms on the erg are barely within a minute of Dwayne’s reported times (although faster than his actual race times). Yet he took the time, did the traveling, and spent the money. It doesn’t make sense to me that the supposedly fastest erger in the world would do that yet remain uninterested in competing at his specialty. Another thing that is possible, but something that is so unlike anything I’ve ever seen in sports that it strains credulity.
He's never claimed to be a good rower. There is a difference. He even said how the conditions in Canada weren't anything like what him and his bowman were used to. Anyone that has ever rowed a boat can tell you that can make a big difference.
