USRowing: For Immediate Release: August 1, 2024

1 August 2024

The U.S. crew of Liam Corrigan (Old Lyme, Conn./Harvard University/California Rowing Club), Michael Grady (Pittsburgh, Pa./Cornell University/California Rowing Club), Justin Best (Kennett Square, Pa./Drexel University/California Rowing Club), and Nick Mead (Strafford, Pa./Princeton University/New York Athletic Club) took the lead as the crews approached the 500-meter mark and then kept New Zealand at bay the rest of the way down the course to secure the top spot on the podium. The Americans held just a bowball advantage 500 meters into the race but used their strong base pace to push out to nearly a one-second lead at the midway point. New Zealand cut the advantage to just a half-second with 500 meters to go, but, the American boat was able to respond to New Zealand’s move and pull away to win by 0.85 seconds.

“We definitely executed really well,” Grady said. “I mean, we knew we had a good start. We knew we had a good base middle. We knew we have a good lift. We felt them the entire time. I mean, hats off to them. They’re really great competitors, and they raced it really hard. You know, they even walked back into us (at about) 600 (meters). I was pretty confident that we had the last little bit of speed. We had a full set of moves to go through to sprint to the line. So yeah, executed really well. Really happy with that performance obviously.”

The four, which have been together since last season, won silver at the world championships last year and gold at the world cup race in Lucerne earlier this year. That experience together, as well as their years of rowing as teammates, proved pivotal in their success on Thursday.

“Like to really drive that home, Grady and I were in the 2014 junior eight that came second to last in Hamburg, Germany,” Corrigan said. “There’s been a lot of strokes since then. Michael and Justin rowed together (at the under 23 level), and all of us, to some degree, rowed against each other in college and with each other in college and then for the last five years since 2019 in different boats – pairs with each other, against each other. There’s so much trust that’s been developed in that amount of time. You feel like one unit; it doesn’t feel like four people. It feels like one boat. That sounds so cliche, but that’s how I really feel about it.”

The victory gave the U.S. rowing squad its first medal of this Olympic Games. The U.S. finished fifth in the event in Tokyo and last won a medal in the event at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, taking home a bronze.

“I don’t think special does it enough justice because of the amount of meters, hours, days with each other away from our loved ones,” Best said. “You know the funerals you have to miss, the weddings. You have to miss social events. It’s all encompassing what it takes to get to this moment. We have a group of four guys that love each other, and like I said, special can’t describe it because it really is just like that ethereal bond that I think we’ve created over the last few years. Now, we have a physical reminder of everything that we put in, and we’ll have this for the rest of our lives.”