“Although they’re known in anecdotal history as the Nazi Olympics and the Jesse Owens Olympics, Jim McMillin recalls the 1936 games as one of the highlights of his life.Five years before America went to war against Germany, McMillin and the other members of the University of Washington’s eight-man shell varsity team won the gold medal with der Fuhrer in the stands.That was a tough race, McMillin said. I said if I ever worked that hard again, I’d make a million bucks, but I never did.The surviving members of the nine-man crew held a private reunion last week at McMillin’s Bainbridge Island home.We sit around and lie to each other, McMillin said of the periodic get-togethers. Our crew gets better and better every year.McMillin was a UW junior in the rowing squad when he and the varsity team broke an Olympic and world record at Lake Grunau, near Berlin, in 1936. He started rowing as a freshman in college and left the sport when he graduated. But in the short space of four years, he became a member of the best eight-man crew in the world.Of course, having a family has been the number one experience in my life, he said. But winning that race is second.The circumstances surrounding the race were as dramatic as the American crew’s victory. Coach Al Ulbrickson shifted the varsity roster several times throughout 1936, and the team had to ask the city of Seattle to fund their trip to Germany just days before their departure. The United States Rowing Committee did not have the money to send them to the Olympics.Germany itself, McMillin said, had a military air, though he saw no hint of the coming war that was to drastically reshape Europe’s social, economic and political landscape.They were blasting music all over the countryside, it seemed like, he said. Mostly it was Mozart. Uniforms, he said, were ubiquitous.McMillin, an island resident since 1958, was the largest member of the team at 6-6 and 188 pounds. He rowed in the fifth position and remembers the race as an exciting one.The German-run Olympic Committee placed the German and Italian boats in the first and second lanes, closest to the announcer and sheltered from the day’s headwind by a rock promontory. The American boat was in the sixth, most exposed lane.Whether intentional or not, the wind and direction of the starter’s megaphone made it difficult to hear, so the American team began a stroke and a half behind the others, and after 500 meters trailed by a half a length.We were just sitting there, McMillin said. And the Brits next to us took off and we thought ‘Jesus! We’d better get going!’The American crew was badly behind – over a length at one point – until the 1800-meter mark, when they pulled ahead of Italy. By the 2000-meter finish, McMillin and his team had broken a world record: 6:25:45. The Italians were right behind them at 6:26:00.Immediately after the race, McMillin jotted down notes on a piece of stationary. Really should have rowed a better race, the notes say. Too excited.Then, beneath, in capital letters and underscored:World champs!!McMillin went on to coach rowing at MIT, then returned to the Seattle area to work at Boeing.That experience alone was worth a college education, McMillin said. I’m glad those of us that are still living keep in close contact.Though some of the team’s members have passed away, the memory of that victory endures.We were just a bunch of local yokels, McMillin said. Most of us had never even been out of the state, and we were halfway around the world, winning a gold medal. “