A scion of the kingdom of Rude and the City, from an early age the author has abided at deepest commitment to the One, the Only, the Original Amateur Code. As the 1960s begin, his accolades in amateur sports mount-a result of his strictest compliance with the Olympic Oath ahead and firmly in mind. Alas, like the gross trespasses upon Rude since the 1950s-by the Spawls, the Podunks, or by other land desecrations and cut-offs from the City-so too the active subversion and deliberate corruption of naïve amateurs was taking place everywhere in our Disunited States. Enemy composes from Regressive Grown-ups-from the Also-Rans, the non-Talented, and those greedily zealous NCAA-types-all bent upon converting amateur sports events to lucre by ever grander international venues.
Adding to that the College of his forebears has been suffering decline in the Sweep Rowing Sport, aka Crew. He is the hope of family and realm for a catalytic paragon, by whom a resurrection of the College's mostly winning ways, after many years of intercollegiate championships becoming long past. They have never attained, moreover, Olympian contention, and that, just for starters, our hero can't stand any longer, given what's ahead by 1964's Innsbruck and Tokyo Olympic Games.
The happiest happenstance comes of our hero's drive and gusto for the Downhill event by Olympian Alpine Skiing. Despite the insistence of his Mum and the College that he complete his undergraduate years as a Classics Major, a stressful symbiosis by the respective optimum conditioning regimens makes a vital chemistry. All factor inputs are especially conducive to top conditioning, and also for superior intensity at both his great sport-Talents. He is also genetically ample to exaltation in two obscure Olympic events through his Indiagene, what he calls "his Gift," by his obscure, but completely legal DNA off the pre-glacial eons of Eurasia.
Mind you, we are still within a stellar era, albeit just past Rude's greatness at Polo, Golf, Yachting, and Tennis. Crew remains the illustrious amateur sport of Rude that wins a scion of Rude his highest status, that of the AmPro. It allows our hero so much greater stature than Pro or Pro-Am or Celebrity Athlete! Even if he'll fall well short of a comparable standing by the Greatest Republic's paid admissions sports, he'll become the paragon that's so easily within his powers.
