Hey everyone

Sorry for not being current with posts, but life post-racing has been hectic to say the least. So much happened the week after the racing I'm not really sure where to start, so I'm not going to just yet... but I will say that being an athlete who is finished competing is like being a rock star in Vegas - cool, but exhausting and frenetic. I did arrive back in the states (after getting delayed another day in China) and now am getting rested up again and ready to transport back to the West Coast.... but I wanted to post up a story that my college roommate drafted up that didn't make the papers (too much Olympics coverage already) that I liked...

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Golden Opportunities



When you first meet Mike Altman, you would not at first guess that he is an Olympic athlete. He is tall without being overbearing, slender to the point of skinny. But as you spend more time with him, you notice something in the way he carries himself, how he moves with the economy and grace that characterize an elite athlete. You later pick up that his jaw is unusually square, and his blue eyes have a certain hardness to them. When you notice all that, it isn't so hard to see him as an Olympian.



Mr. Altman is a lightweight rower. At Georgetown University, he rowed with the varsity heavyweight squad. After he graduated in 1997, he was invited to try out for the lightweight national team—provided he could shed almost forty pounds from a body with virtually no fat on it. He dropped the weight and made the team.



Mr. Altman went on to compete at various international events, winning medals at a number of world championships. But, like most amateur athletes, there was one thing that he truly wanted: to compete in the Olympics. He didn't make the cut for Sydney. More painfully, he was the last man eliminated from the boat that competed in Athens. After the 2004 Games, Mr. Altman faced a painful decision: Should he continue rowing, or not?



It's a particularly acute question for elite rowers. Crew remains a sport where athletes make a name for themselves at top-tier universities, usually in the Northeast. (The three notable exceptions to this rule are the Universities of Wisconsin, California, and, especially, Washington.) In 2008, the top three men's lightweight eights at the Intercollegiate Rowing Association were Cornell, Yale, and the Naval Academy; the top three boats at the Eastern Sprints were Cornell, Princeton, and Yale.



Elite athletes at elite schools often enjoy a world of opportunities awaiting them after graduation. Many superb rowers find it awfully hard to pass up a six-figure salary for the austere life of an amateur athlete.



Compounding the difficulty of Mr. Altman's decision after the Athens Games was the fact that rowing is a sport that can abide longevity. It's not unusual to see rowers compete into their 30s. Rowing isn't like women's gymnastics, where an athletic career is often over before the gymnast faces a single adult decision. (Sir Steve Redgrave, for instance, is a legendary heavyweight oarsman from Great Britain; he is the only athlete in history to have won gold medals in five consecutive Olympiads, starting in Los Angeles and culminating in Sydney.) Even after his near miss in Athens, Mr. Altman would have a legitimate shot at Beijing.



Mr. Altman thought it over for a long time. He arrived at his decision just as one would expect from a jock—albeit a jock with degrees from Georgetown's prestigious School of Foreign Service and UCLA's business school. He turned to the principle of comparative advantage.



Mr. Altman was aware that he had an absolute advantage in lightweight rowing. He was, quite simply, one of the nation's finest lightweight oarsmen. He had the times to prove it, and a display case full of medals from international competitions. The invitation from USRowing to try out for the national team was dispositive proof. He was one of the best.



But was it to his comparative advantage to continue rowing? Mr. Altman had studied David Ricardo, and he knew that to determine his comparative advantage, he would have to compare the competing opportunity costs. Only then could he seriously evaluate the tradeoff.



The opportunity cost of continuing rowing was significant. Mr. Altman had already sacrificed a great deal for his sport. The physical exertion alone was daunting. A six-minute, 2,000-meter race is said to exact as much energy as playing back-to-back basketball games. Exhaustion, pain, and injury wear down even the most dedicated rowers.



There was also his career to consider. Though he had worked in finance for a while, Mr. Altman had not had the time to fully devote himself to the job. He was furthermore eager to start coursework toward an MBA, and was reluctant to forfeit the advantages it might confer on his employment prospects. He resolved to leave the water, focus on his career, and head to business school.



But as the Games drew nearer, Mr. Altman began to re-evaluate the opportunity cost of leaving the sport. The potential upside of returning to rowing was highly uncertain; there were no guarantees he would make the Olympic team. The potential downside was likewise serious. He went to one of his college teammates for advice. "I know I sound like a heartless investment banker when I say this," his friend told Mr. Altman, "but if you really intend to get a decent return out of your investment in the MBA, then now is your best opportunity to make it happen. If things don't work out, you're stuck with the fixed costs associated with financing school, no summer internship to fall back on, and competition from the next batch of MBAs."



And yet Mr. Altman knew that if he chose not to pursue a seat on the national team, he knew he would wonder for the rest of his life if he missed his best chance to compete in the Olympic Games. That, he ultimately decided, was too high an opportunity cost. So Mr. Altman returned to training—and made the Olympic team. Along with Patrick Todd, Will Daly, and Tom Paradiso, Mr. Altman was selected for the Olympic men's lightweight four (without coxswain).



En route to Beijing, the four rowers were joined by four more American lightweights in Linz, Austria, where they won the World Championships in the men's lightweight eight. It was a particularly sweet victory for Mr. Altman, whose first international competition had been in the same event ten years earlier, where his eight had missed the gold by a tenth of a second.



The results in Beijing, however, were less cheerful. The four drew tough heats, and was eliminated from medal consideration in the semi-finals. The boat ultimately finished fifth in the B-final.



Was it worth it? "It's disappointing, but we just weren't having a great week for whatever reason," Mr. Altman recently wrote on his blog. "It's frustrating because we are a good crew, probably the best I've been a part of, so it's too bad this stretch had to come at the Olympics."



Mr. Altman may not have placed as high as he would have liked in Beijing. In twenty years, it's possible that his career may not be as advanced as it might otherwise have been. Yet this much is certain. If you were to ask his college teammates—among them many successful lawyers, consultants, and bankers—they would, to a one, acknowledge that Mr. Altman is the richer man for it.