“Now! Now! Now!”

“Now! Now! Now!” is Al Ulbrickson’s shouted command at the climax of the Olympic final. As the German, Italian, and American boats race nearly level toward the finish, the repeated word compresses the moment’s demand into three beats: the crew must go harder even though it is already giving everything it has.

The Call at the Finish

The call comes as the lead shifts among the three boats and the German and Italian crews draw close. From the balcony, Ulbrickson bites his cigarette in half, spits it out, jumps onto a chair, and bellows the words at Bobby Moch. The action makes the phrase more than commentary from shore: it is an attempt to reach a crew at the limit of its strength.

The command lands amid competing noise. A loudspeaker voice calls out the names of the Italian and German boats before adding America; spectators fill the grandstands, and the crews are driving toward the line. Against that disorder, the short, repeated imperative is starkly direct. It names no tactic and offers no explanation; its force lies in the insistence that there is still another effort to make.

A Signal Felt as Well as Heard

Moch responds by pounding the wooden knockers on the tiller lines against the ironbark boards fixed to the hull. The crew understands the vibration as a signal to raise the effort, even if the shouted words themselves cannot reach them. Ulbrickson’s call and Moch’s blows thus converge on the same demand through different channels: sound from the balcony, impact within the boat.

Don Hume takes the beat higher until the rowers reach forty-four strokes. They have never rowed at that rate before, and the strain makes any mistimed stroke dangerous: a single error could catch a crab and bring catastrophe. Joe Rantz’s contorted face and Hume’s wide-open eyes register the cost of continuing, while the crew’s white blades flicker in and out of the water. The call’s urgency is measured not only by its repetition but by the physical risk and effort that follow it.

The Phrase at the Finish

The three boats cross the line within a single second. The American crew has edged narrowly ahead, but the Italians are closing and the Germans are beside them until the last stroke. In that finish, “Now! Now! Now!” marks an attempt to summon an effort beyond what the rowers had thought possible, rather than a guarantee that effort will decide the race comfortably or early.

The phrase also appears as the title of a later Collier’s article: the book’s notes say Ulbrickson told an anecdote about Jim McMillin and pancakes in “Now! Now! Now!” The note establishes the title’s recurrence in the account of Ulbrickson, though it does not explain the article’s choice of title. In the race scene, meanwhile, the words remain attached to a precise instant: the narrow passage between exhaustion and one final stroke.