To mark 100 days from the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Nine.com.au asked you what your favourite Olympic memories were in a survey. The response was overwhelming! We chose 50 of them to re-live, one a day, before new memories are made in Paris. Scroll on for today's memory.
There's an enduring sports adage that warns against doubting winners. Never write off champions, the saying goes.
On Lake Lanier at the Atlanta 1996 Olympics, the gold medal triumph of Australia's "Oarsome Foursome" served as a reminder to indeed never write off champions.
A crew consisting of Nick Green, Mike McKay, James Tomkins and Andrew Cooper had won gold in the men's rowing four at the Barcelona 1992 Olympics.
But in the years that followed the Barcelona Games, shaky form, the retirement of Cooper and concerns for the team's motivation left many doubting if the crew could triumph again in Atlanta.
Watch the video at the top of the page to see the "Oarsome Foursome" win Olympic gold in 1996!
Among a host of poor performances was how the crew fared at a regatta in Lucerne, Switzerland in 1995, where Green, McKay, Tomkins and Cooper bombed out in the semi-finals.
And at the world championships a couple of months later, held in the Finnish city of Tampere, they battled home in fifth place.
Another couple of months later, the crew was forced to find a new rower when Cooper announced his retirement.
A 21-year-old by the name of Drew Ginn filled the seat.
Ginn's inclusion was promising, but the team had been attracting negative media coverage for some time and it continued in early 1996, reaching a point where the crew's coach, Noel Donaldson, banned the media from speaking to his rowers.
The crew's moment of redemption came in Atlanta on July 27, when Green, McKay, Tomkins and Ginn powered their boat to victory in a tick over six minutes on Lake Lanier.
The "Oarsome Foursome", a champion crew but a crew written off by many, rose to the occasion.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.