Miller helps U.S. win world crew title

Penn junior Garrett Miller finally had a moment to himself. He was alone in the hotel room with no thought of going out that night, no designs on seeing southern France, even though he was there for the first time in his life. On this night, it was just going to be Miller alone, lying flat on the sheets of a rumpled bed, as the fog of satisfaction that often encircles someone on the day they achieve a life-long dream mixed with the warm night air above him. A video recording of the U.S. World Championship crew team, which won the gold that afternoon with the help of Miller, was playing over and over again. Someone had put the race to music. If the World Championship, one of the three major international competitions that come in the years between Summer Olympics, was a horse race, they would have won by a nose. The victory came by 15 feet -- two seconds faster than a Romanian team that happened to find the U.S. at the top of its game. Competing at the Worlds, as Miller described, is, for any little kid who picks up an oar and decides to take up crew, the equivalent of making an NBA team, pitching in the majors or playing quaterback in the NFL. It's a feat that also puts a member of the team on a straight road toward making the team for the next Summer Olympics. According to Miller, following this achievement, making the Olympic team for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney should be simply a formality. "I still have to try out each year, but since I was on the first boat this past year, it looks pretty good," Miller said. The whole experience of winning the Worlds and having the Olympics to look toward has left Miller on a high that makes life seem a little like a dream that won't end. "I was looking forward to this since I began rowing in high school,'' Miller said. "Somehow, though, I always knew I would make it." The confidence he displays after having made the team and won the championship, was, in fact, present before everything had taken place. But it was with good reason that Miller, who rows on the first boat of Penn's heavyweight varsity crew team, felt confident about making the team. He spent so many hours training, so many nights staying in while others went out, as if the mere dedication of his efforts would serve as testament to his success. But everyone who's ever rowed knows that training and dedication may be enough in the mind of the athlete who's spent the many hours working out and practicing, but not necessarily in the mind of who's choosing the team. But Miller, who's going to be spending this semester away from campus on the University's Washington D.C. program, has talent. He competed in the Junior World Championships, the World Championship's lesser sister for younger athletes. He then posted the top ergometer time -- scores taken on the practice machine used for rowing -- of any collegiate in the nation this past year. And as coach Stan Bergman said, "He's a special kind of athlete." In fact, Bergman cannot recall any other crew member who competed in the World Championships while still in college during his tenure as Penn coach. Only John Pescatore, a 1986 graduate, competed there in 1987. Such facts were far from the mind of Miller as he lay on that empty bed in a hotel room in southern France. There was a medal around his neck that he somehow could not find a way to take his hands off. It was gold, and in a strange way, that hue signified to him that the guys he once looked up to as great rowers were not as far away as they once seemed. It was a little different that night than it had been before, now that he met his dreams. And then he realized there was Sydney. "I can't wait for it man," he would say later. "I can feel it taking over everything inside as it gradually pushes everything else out of the way."