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Wednesday, September 20
Team's performance off just a bit
Associated Press
PENRITH, Australia -- Things aren't going so well for the
U.S. men's eight crew that was supposed to revive an American
gold-medal tradition.
|  | | The American men's eight team, in the blue uniforms, won its heat Wednesday by just two-hundreths of a second over Romania.
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Although the three-time defending world champions won a
qualifying heat Wednesday to advance to the finals Sunday, they did so by a miniscule .02 of a second. They were second in a first-round race Monday.
"The speed they're doing now isn't what they were doing a month
ago," coach Mike Teti said. "Something's wrong."
"It's a little bit of a rhythm thing," crew member Porter
Collins said. "Today came down to pulling -- a street fight. We've
got to be a little smarter next time."
The women's eight won its heat and the women's quadruple sculls
finished second in another, sending both to the finals. A
second-place finish for the men's lightweight double sculls
advanced it to a semifinal Friday.
The United States, the only country to qualify in all 14 events,
has yet to lose a boat through two rounds of qualifying.
The men's eight came to Sydney favored to end a 36-year Olympic
championship drought and armed with advice and inspiration from
their golden predecessors of 1964. The wait for another victory has
been especially long for a country that won 11 of the first 14
Olympic titles, including eight in a row from 1920-56.
Now, there's the chance the men's eight could be shut out of a
medal for the third consecutive time, which has never happened.
"We have some things to figure out," said Teti, who won a
bronze medal on the 1988 squad, the last U.S. medal winner. "You
have to admire them for their effort, but we're definitely not
moving the boat like we need to to be an Olympic medalist."
The women's eight was proud of how they bounced back from a
second-place finish in their qualifying heat Monday.
"It was actually a big difference today," said Linda Miller of
San Diego. "We approached the race a lot more aggressively. Our
goal was to really attack the first 1,000 and control the race, and
that's what we did. We're ready for Sunday."
The men have until then to work out their kinks.
They've already tried minor adjustments like moving from the
athlete's village to a quieter, warmer hotel that's an hour closer
to the venue. They're considering the major change of moving guys
around the boat.
Another option is calling some of their friends from '64 and
seeing if they have any ideas.
The relationship between the past and the present was Teti's
idea. Having grown up in Upper Darby, Pa., riding out of the same
club that spawned America's last Olympic champion eight, Teti
idolized that team.
He has become friends with some of them through the years and
thought it would be fun to introduce them to his squad, the oldest
of whom was born six months before the '64 team's golden day.
One or two at a time, the seven living members of that crew plus
their coach, Al Rosenberg, have passed on advice and their best
wishes to the 2000 team. Rosenberg even climbed into the cox's seat
and got on the water with them.
"We have a ton of reverence for them," said coxswain Pete
Cipollone. "We have some two- and three-time Olympians here who
don't have any medals, so they recognize how difficult it is to
win.
"When those guys came in, everyone was like, 'Wow! Impart your
wisdom on us. Go ahead and tell us anything you want."'
Little of their talks had anything to do with stroking oars. It
was mostly reliving the glory days.
"If you're an elementary school basketball player, wouldn't it
be great to sit down with Michael Jordan and pick his brain a
little bit? I think it was the same situation with these guys,"
Teti said.
For Cipollone, it was the chance to ask the questions he never
asked the late Bill Knecht, a '64 crew member who rowed at the same
club in southern New Jersey as Cipollone's father.
"As much as I always wanted to ask him what it was like, I was
too much in awe of the guy to actually bring up the subject,"
Cipollone said. "Now I want to dedicate my performance to Bill
Knecht."
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U.S. men, women eights don't measure up to expectations
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