The studios were unique, sharing a single live room between the two of them (with dueling recording windows peering in), and the dudes who ran the place a cheerful bunch of musical entrepreneurs who pooled together their gear, resources, and know-how are some of the best.
Chasing ever-lower numbers has often created the wrong kind of positive news for the sport, which is why track officials, concerned about doping, have tried to emphasize duels over records in recent years.
The Vancouver captain Henrik Sedin led the way with two goals, and Roberto Luongo won his goaltending duel with Henrik Lundqvist, recording his first preseason shutout.
The accompaniment mixed traditional percussive thwacks with sound effects of all kinds — pouring, swirling and blowing bubbles in water; tramping on gravel; crinkling magnetic recording tape; scratching a 78-r.p.m. record; dueling with umbrellas — performed by the percussionists William Winant and Alex Lipowski.
He broke up their personal duel with a meet record yesterday that highlighted the best night yet for the American team.
The United States preserved its perfect Duel in the Pool record by beating the European All-Stars in a tiebreaker race at Glascow, Scotland.
Landale, a correspondent for the BBC, is descended from one of the two men who fought the last recorded fatal duel on Scottish soil.
These duels were first recorded in the South, brought by emigrants to the American Frontier as a crude form of the "code duello," a highly formalized means of solving disputes between gentlemen with swords or guns that had its origins in European chivalry.
The women's race appeared to be the more competitive of the two elite races this year, with a repeat duel promised between the world record holder from Great Britain, Paula Radcliffe, and the woman she seemed to be towing behind her the whole way in 2007, Ethiopia's Gete Wami.
Now you can settle things just like they would in the old west: with a good ol' fashion duel — sans bullets, a criminal record, and the risk of gangrene, of course.
