U.S. men's eight ends 40-year gold-medal drought

By ANN GREEN

Gannett News Service

SCHINIAS, Greece - The U.S. men's eight rowed to Olympic gold Sunday for the first time in 40 years.

Crew member Jason Read of Ringoes, N.J., took a celebratory dip, jumping from the bow moments after the boat cleared the finish line.

Later as the crew stood on the dock where their medals were to be awarded, Read pumped his fist at his mom, Joan, who was ringing a cowbell she used to urge the rowers home in the final 500 meters.

For Read, it marked a moment of personal triumph on his road to recovery from 9/11.

A first-time Olympian and volunteer firefighter from Ringoes, N.J., Read used rowing as therapy in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center. He was dispatched to help with body recovery efforts at Ground Zero.

Read, 26, was asked how the U.S. victory will play in his hometown and at the Amwell Valley Rescue Squad, where he's chief of operations.

``The fire department and rescue squad are going to be pretty happy for our country, for me and my boatmates,'' he said. ``There's no greater privilege than to represent America at this time with all that's going on across the world.''

With the U.S. women's eight taking the silver medal Sunday, it was the best showing by Americans in the event at the Olympics since the boycotted 1984 Games in Los Angeles, where the women won gold and the men silver. The men's last medal was a bronze in 1988.

Coming into the 2004 games, much was expected of the Americans.

Both the men and women set world best times, aided by strong tailwinds, in their heats a week earlier at the Schinias Olympic Rowing and Canoeing Center, 25 miles from Athens on the Aegean Sea.

Men's coach Mike Teti said a pre-race visit from former Olympic track star Carl Lewis as well as favorable winds inspired his team Sunday.

``This morning when I saw that a headwind had kind of puffed up, I felt the gods were looking our way. This is definitely a headwind crew,'' he said.

``Headwinds favor us because of our power and our length. So we changed tactics a little bit. In the heat, it was just a burn the whole way. Today we thought we needed some reserve for the second half of the race. So we delayed the moves a little longer.''

The U.S. men led the race from the start, covering the 2,000 meters in 5:42.48. They clocked a record-breaking 5:19.85 in their heat a week earlier.

``The thing that makes this special is that countless Olympian rowers from the 1960s on have given us money, written us notes, given us moral support, come by practice,'' Teti said. ``It meant a lot to this team. We felt we were doing this for us, mostly, but we felt we needed to end this drought in the men's eight.''

After opening up the lead, the U.S. countered a late charge by the Netherlands to win by 1.27 seconds. Australia took the bronze.

For U.S. crew member Joseph Hansen, 25, who lives in Corvallis, Ore., and is originally from Bakersfield, Calif., the gold capped a perfect first Olympics.

``Listening to the national anthem, seeing my dad and mom and wife cheering for me up there, it was all pretty emotional,'' he said.

Boatmate Dan Beery, 29, whose hometown is Oaktown, Ind., said the medal ceremony was something he never imagined when he was at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he rowed on the Tennessee River.

Equally hard to imagine is that Beery was diagnosed with mononucleosis in March.

``You lose and lose and lose, but every time I came back a little bit better,'' he said.

The U.S. crew also included 5-foot-1 Pete Cipollone (Ardmore, Pa.), who coxed the eight to the gold, Wyatt Allen (Portland, Maine), Chris Ahrens (Milwaukee), Matt Deakin (San Francisco), Beau Hoopman (Plymouth, Wis.) and Bryan Volpenhein (Cincinnati).