Jason Dorland is no stranger to competition. As a rower and coach, he’s seen his share of races won and lost. But after a devastating performance at the 1988 Olympics, Jason was overwhelmed by a sense of failure—and with small wonder. Winning at all costs, whereby the playing field is seen as a battlefield, is pretty much the industry standard when it comes to motivating elite athletes. That philosophy coloured his own coaching style, until he met someone who coped with the loss of her own Olympic dream, and viewed competition itself, in a different way. An honest, intimate look at the reality of high-level athletics, Chariots and Horses is more than a sports story. In charting his progress from struggling athlete to an inspirational coach driven to instill a healthy competitive spirit in his rowers, Jason Dorland shows how in sports and in life, it’s all about the journey.

Abstract:

An overview of the current debate on the origin and spread of horse-drawn chariots with a brief review of the archaeological, archaezoological, religious, anthropological and technological evidence and a more detailed survey of linguistics. Raulwing outlines the different types of linguistic evidence, with many examples, and a general history of developments and innovations in chariot design and use. He argues that chariots originated in the Near East in the early 2nd millennium BC and that there was no `horse' or `wheeled transport' in Proto-Indo-European language.