Congratulations to the U.S. Women’s Open 8+ for taking Gold! Thanks to a timely phone call from my wife Melissa last night, I was able to catch the Women’s Open 8+ Olympic final on TV. It’s probably been 7+ years since I’ve watched a regatta so it brought back a flood of memories from my own rowing/coaching days. It was awesome watching 3 of the 6 crews race [Empacher shells], including the U.S. Women!

They led through the 1000m mark with almost a half a boat length over Canada and never looked back. Both Mel and I were waiting for the Canadians to gain water during the last 500m but their charge never materialized as the U.S. Women held on (at one point they almost had Canada past their coxswain) to win by almost a 3/4 boat length. I believe their winning time was 6:05.24. For comparison, the winning Men’s Open 8+ was 5:25.11 (the U.S. Men took Bronze in that race, loosing to Canada).

MSNBC has a recap and videos of all the Olympic rowing races [here] if you have no idea what Rowing is.