Monday Milestone: Oarsome
In the spirit of London 2012, over the coming weeks the Monday Milestone will take on an Olympic flavour, as we examine some of the great moments in Summer Games history
This Week in History:
1992, August 2
Australia begins a rowing dynasty as the men’s coxless four, the ‘Oarsome Foursome’ take gold in Barcelona.
It was late at night in my living room. That much I remember. I don’t know why I was allowed to be up. It was twenty years ago. But there they were in that golden boat, stretching along the waters of Lake Banyoles drawing away from the field…
The Milestone parks the Delorean twenty years ago, when the ‘Oarsome Foursome’, James Tomkins, Nick Green, Mike McKay and Andrew Cooper sat atop world rowing. Australia’s men’s coxless fours were world champions, and deserved favourites heading to Barcelona in 1992 for the Games of the XXV Olympiad, hoping to transform their success at world championships into the immortality of Olympic gold.
The significance of hosting the Games at the Estadi Olimpic de Montjuic in Barcelona for the first ever Spanish Olympics was only dwarfed by the sheer enormity of the changing political landscape around it. Since the Games had left Seoul just four years earlier, the Cold War was over, the Berlin Wall had come down, Germany had reunited, the USSR had dissolved, forced to represent a ‘Unified Team’, Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia were independent from the former Yugoslavia, and Nelson Mandela had overseen the end of Apartheid, cheering South Africa at their first Games since 1960. In short, the world was a different place.
So when the men’s coxless fours took to the water at Lake Banyoles for their Olympic final, it was difficult to determine exactly the source of any serious threats to the Australian hot favourites. Who stood in the way of the Oarsome Foursome’s Olympic dream?
As the gun started, pretty quickly, over the two thousand metres of the Olympic rowing finals, it became clear the Americans and Slovenians looked to be the greatest threats as the boys pulled for their country.
Stroke. Stroke. Stroke.
But they settled in, and three minutes in, by the halfway mark, the Australians had edged in front of both challengers and were going for gold.
By the 1500m mark, Australia held their breath. Were they going to do it? This would be a classic victory and one thoroughly deserved. They were more than a second in front.
When Tomkins, Green, McKay and Cooper crossed the line, they’d fulfilled their Olympic promise with gold and later as they stood on that Olympic dais, receiving their medals, they lived out the Spanish creed of those Olympics: ‘amigos para siempre’ or, ‘friends for life’.
Yet the true legacy of this gold medal in Barcelona was the dynasty that these Australian men had begun in world rowing over the coming years, including more gold four years later in Atlanta (and of course those fantastic Goulburn Valley fruit ads).
Because on Lake Banyoles that day, the Oarsome Foursome entered Olympic history. There were celebrations in Spain. There were celebrations back home in Australia. And there were celebrations right there in my living room stretching deep into the night.
Or that’s what I believe happened, anyways. I was sent straight to bed.
The Milestone Five: Highlights of the Barcelona Olympics
5. Englishman Derek Redmond tears a hamstring during the 400m semi final. His father defies authority, runs out on the track and helps him finish the race to a huge ovation from the crowd.
4. After a closely fought 10,000m race, white South African runner Elana Meyer and black Ethopian runner Derartu Tulu complete a victory lap hand in hand in a symbol of racial unification.
3. Professional basketballers are reintroduced to the Olympics bringing together The Dream Team including Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan.
2. Aside from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania sending their own teams, the remainder of the former Soviet states compete as the “Unified team”. They would still win 45 gold medals.
1. At the opening ceremony, the Olympic flame is lit by Paralympic archer Antonio Rebollo who impressively fires a flaming arrow into the cauldron.
