Canadian Eights On Golden Pond

Forget the overblown nicknames or the endless hype.
Nope, Canada's men's rowing eights didn't want any of that. So single-minded was their desire to erase the disastrous fifth-place finish of Athens 2004.
That they did, crushing the field at the Shunyi Olympic rowing park to earn Canada's second gold medal of the Beijing Games early, early this morning. They did it as one of the country's most highly touted gold hopes coming into these Olympics.
But save those 'redeem team' monikers for someone else. These nine guys (eight rowers and coxswain Brian Price) have the only title they wanted: Olympic champions.
"It's not about redemption," an elated Adam Kreek told CBC after their decisive triumph. "It's about seizing the moment and we seized the moment."
This was a story that was supposed to be written four years ago in Athens. The Canadian eights went into those Games as world champions, too, but faded badly in the final and didn't even hit the podium. They've had to live with the disappointment for four years now.
"Gold medals are awarded in the summer but they're earned in the winter," said Kyle Hamilton. "This was four years of hard winters."
Added Jake Wetzel, a part of that '04 crew: "In Athens, it was a very hard-fought race. It was one where we fell behind and we battled back. Here, we dominated, and it's just such a testament to what a great crew this was."
As an aside, so, too was the camera work in Shunyi (we've always been fans of those stunning overhead shots). And CBC did well by putting the commentary in the hands of the very capable Scott Oake and Barney Williams, an insightful analyst as an Olympic rookie.
They had plenty of good to talk about on this day. Melanie Kok and Tracy Cameron earned a heart-stopping bronze in the women's double sculls, a feat also matched by the men's lightweight fours (Iain Brambell, Jon Beare, Mike Lewis and Liam Parsons).
Combined with the silver earned by Scott Frandsen and Dave Calder on Saturday in the men's pairs, it was a four-medal haul by Canada at Shunyi (almost five, but the women's eights wound up an agonizing fourth). As Olympic Morning anchor Scott Russell put it, that harkens back to the glory days of Barcelona 1992.
Oh, before we forget, the rest of that golden eights crew: Ben Rutledge, Kevin Light, Malcolm Howard, Andrew Byrnes and Dominic Seiterle.