The Fast Boat to Barcelona : Olympic Canoeists Fred, Dave Spaulding Fulfill Their Grandfather’s Prediction

A few years before finishing his doctorate in philosophy--University of Edinburgh, Class of 1935--Henry David Gray was a better-than-average decathlete at Pomona College. He might have been Olympic decathlon material, but he had a fatal flaw: the pole vault. He was anatomically incorrect for such a gravity-defying event.

“I was always a little heavy in through here,” he says, patting his hips and thighs.

After recognizing his own athletic mortality one spring day at Pomona, Gray had “a silly idea,” he says. “I thought, ‘Maybe I’m not going to the Olympics, but someday my grandchildren will.’ ”

Gray was psychic. Two of his grandchildren are representing the United States in canoeing at the Barcelona Olympics. Fred and Dave Spaulding, sons of Gray’s eldest daughter, made a prophet of their grandfather, qualifying in April for the six-man team.

Gray, an 84-year-old retired minister who lives in Ventura, is glowing with grandfatherly pride, but he also is a little surprised that his prediction came true. As youngsters, the Spaulding brothers were not typical jocks. Gray didn’t consider them good athletes, but they did have “quick reactions (playing) ‘steal the bacon,’ ” he says. And in retrospect, he points out, they did have “incredible balance,” a skill that would prove essential in the sport of canoeing.

“They rode unicycles in parades and put on skits,” Gray says, sitting in his office, which is lined with books on theology and philosophy. Opening a photo album, he points to the brothers a dozen years ago, skinny tow-headed teens. If anyone had suggested that the Olympics lay ahead, Gray would have “told them they were crazy,” he says.

Fred, 26, and Dave, a year younger, lived with their grandparents for more than half their teen-age years, moving to Ventura from Connecticut with their mother Ellen, and older brother Bill, when their parents separated. The boys stayed in a back-yard tent until an addition could be built.

“We probably tested our grandparents at times,” Dave says. “The fact that they put up with it is amazing to me.”

The canoeing success of the Spauldings almost does seem to be preordained, as if nothing could have kept them from fulfilling their grandfather’s vision. Fate brought them to Southern California--Long Island Sound in the dead of winter doesn’t exactly inflame passion for canoeing--but it was luck that got them into a canoe in the first place.

When Fred was in seventh grade, his mother was going through his clothes before putting them in the washer when she found a crumpled flyer in his shirt pocket. It had been sent home by physical education and math teacher Bill Bragg, who was looking for kids to join his Ventura Olympic Canoe Club.

Had she thrown the flyer in the garbage, the brothers wouldn’t be paddling their own canoe today. But she prodded her disinterested son into going to the first class. “Once Fred got there, he knew it was right for him,” says his grandmother Helen, a slight, gentle woman with fluffy white hair. “He had a strong sense of balance and flow.”

Fred began to win medals at local and state meets but his brother stayed on the sidelines for about four years. “He didn’t want to be in his older brother’s shadow,” Gray says. Gray finally sat him down “to get to the bottom of why he would not try canoeing.” Realizing he was fighting forces beyond his control, Dave confessed. “He told me, ‘Grandpa, there is no reason (for not canoeing). I’ll try it,’ ” Gray recalls.

Gray, who was determined “to try to avoid being a father figure to the boys and be more grandfatherly and a counselor and coach,” shakes his head when he thinks how different the two brothers are.

“Dave is buoyant, fun, a bit of a philosopher, eclectic, likes many things,” Gray says in a raspy voice, the result of losing his vocal cords to cancer. “Fred is serious, immensely determined and artistic.”

While Fred set his sights on the Olympics from the beginning, Dave took a less intense approach. “I didn’t officially get started until after the ’84 Olympics,” Dave says. “Before that I mostly fooled around.”

Working at the Olympic canoeing event on Lake Casitas, where he “got to see all my heroes,” motivated him.

The brothers, who graduated from Buena High and Ventura College, tried out for the 1988 Olympic team and narrowly missed qualifying. In the four years since, Fred graduated from Cal State Long Beach and Dave from UC Irvine. They had picked their respective colleges in large part to be near their training facility, the Newport Aquatic Center in Newport Beach.

When the brothers were living with their grandparents, Helen usually drove them to practice, which began at dawn, “rain or shine,” she says. For an hour and a half every day before school, they trained with Bragg off the coast.

The hard work continues. Propelling a flat-water canoe on a straight line while kneeling on one knee takes balance, upper-body strength and experience. “It takes seven years to learn to paddle a canoe,” Dave says.

Until they joined the U.S. canoe team in June at Lake Placid, N.Y., the brothers worked out every day in Newport Beach. Fred spent nearly three hours a day on the water and also lifted weights three times a week. Dave was innovative in training, focusing on technique.

Fred, who is married and makes ceramics for a living, and Dave, a bachelor who hasn’t decided how to use his political science degree, are competitive with each other in a friendly way, the competition adding a spark to their workouts.

“He’s faster than I am in singles, so I like beating him,” Dave says. “We have a healthy rivalry.”

The U.S. team worked out at Lake Placid until leaving for Barcelona, where the canoeing competition will start Friday. With canoeing having only four events--singles and doubles at 500 and 1,000 meters--it is not yet decided if the team will use all six team members. Fred is the team’s top-ranked canoeist in the C-1 1,000 by virtue of his first-place finish at the trials. He and Dave came in second in the C-2 1,000, but they could be teamed with other American canoeists at the Olympics.

“We’re probably not going to be paired together,” says Fred, who considers the East Europeans the odds-on favorites.

With only slight variations of wind and waves affecting a canoeist’s performance, Fred is a little anxious about the Olympic course. Budget-conscious Spanish organizers built a canal only 1,000 meters long, which may eliminate the need for an official scorer--the first canoe to hit the wall wins.

While their grandfather envisioned his grandchildren in the Olympics, he didn’t dream about them winning a medal. Always the philosopher, Henry Gray knows that the race is more important than the results.

“Just getting there is a major achievement,” he says. “Fred and Dave are the only two brothers from Ventura to ever get into the Olympics and the only two brothers in the world competing in canoeing. That in itself is something to be terribly proud of.”