By PETE SWANSON
Clarion Sports Editor

When he joined United States Olympic Team rowing colleagues on Thursday night's plane flight from New York City to Athens, Greece, Steve Tucker could smile about the irony of his avocation.

The 34-year-old Tucker, nephew of Princeton resident Nancy Nixon and the late Charles Nixon, grew up in the landlocked city of Mooresville, near Indianapolis. He ran cross country at Culver Military Academy, enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston to major in physics, and made the MIT swimming team.

His story is not unlike that of fellow Olympic rower Dan Beery, 29-year-old North Knox High grad whose mother is the former Merry Hyneman of Hazleton, where grandparents Meredith and Pegg Hyneman reside. The 6-foot-7, 215-pound Beery will row in eight-man boat competition in Athens, while the 5-8, 153-pound Tucker will join Greg Ruckman of Wyoming, Ohio, in lightweight doubles.

"My rowing career literally began indoors, at a fraternity party the spring of my junior year at MIT," Tucker said by telephone Thursday afternoon from New York City's John F. Kennedy Airport.

"The fraternity had a rowing machine indoors. A bunch of us decided to play a game on the machine. We wanted to see how fast we could row 100 meters. That seemed challenging."

Beery's rowing career, as he detailed in the Daily Clarion's July 16 edition, came after he transferred from Bryan College in Dayton, Tenn., where he played basketball, to Tennessee-Chattanooga. Playing a pickoff basketball game at UTC, he was spotted by club team rowing coach and ex-Olympic rower Robert Espeseth. Espeseth told the former Oaktown, Ind., schoolboy: "If you row for me, I'll make you a star."

Like Beery, Tucker took quickly to his new sport.

"I really enjoyed rowing that spring. It's more a team sport than swimming," said Tucker, whose Gibson County connections include first cousin Emily Burris LaGrange and second cousin Zach LaGrange, her son.

"I found I liked being outside and the racing. I found that, technically, I'm more proficient at rowing than swimming.

"MIT competes in the top collegiate rowing league. As I got into the sport, I wanted to race in better boats. I thought I was as good a rower as the guys at Harvard, Princeton and Yale."

To continue rowing after graduation, Tucker "looked for a job in Boston. I found one in the Harvard Medical School lab, doing research with viruses. My job was a combination of physics and biology."

Son of the late Robert Tucker, former Petersburg schoolboy; and former Winslow schoolgirl Elaine Tucker, sister of Nancy Nixon, the Olympian-to-be came under the tutelage of Harvard rowing coach Charlie Butt.

"It took me a while to figure out how to be really good at this sport," Tucker said.

"There's a conditioning aspect that comes into play with a few years of workouts. You must be strong in pushing down on the water.

"You must perfect technique. That comes from a lot of miles in the boat.

"And there's definitely a mental aspect, recognizing when the boat feels good and when it doesn't. There's a certain finesse to rowing."

Beery lauds Tucker as "an exception to the big-boy rule," the adage that bigger is better in a sport that requires leverage. "Steve is one of the fastest singles scullers in the country. It's amazing for a lightweight to be that good."

Tucker said lightweight doubles competition "has weight limits, just like wrestling. The maximum for an individual is 160 pounds. A two-man crew can average only 154 per man."

His second Olympics, to be preceded by Team USA's two weeks of training in Bulgaria, is "a little different experience," said Tucker, who spent last Thanksgiving in Princeton.

"In 2000, Conal Groom and I won at the Olympic Trials in New Jersey. This time, Greg Ruckman and I won a qualifying regatta in Europe.

"There was more pressure this time because if we hadn't qualified, the United States wouldn't have a team in lightweight doubles."

Having handled that pressure, they put higher expectations on themselves.

"We finished 11th in Australia four years ago. We went there thinking we'd be happy to make the finals and finish in the top six.

"Now our chances are much better. Greg and I won a World Cup and finished third in another last year. We finished fourth this year in a World Cup for the qualifying regatta. I think we can beat any boat out there. It's a matter of putting together our top race on any day.

"Four of five boats can win - Italy, Poland, France, Hungary and the United States. The Irish will be very close, although they've had some illness."