posted on May 4, 2003

United States coxswain

"When you get an opportunity to race against the defending world champions you really just want to come with your best performance. They got the lead early and were sort of holding it on us. Somewhere just past halfway we broke a little bit on them and got a little bit of a lead. Then it stayed like that the rest of the way. For most of the way it was back-and-forth, neck-and-neck and they seemed to have advantage.

"I consider this like a preseason game and I don't think there are any upsets in preseason. It was just two crews coming out trying to get some racing experience. It's early, months before the world championships.

"This is my fourth trip to the Montlake Cut. Either seven or eight out of the nine guys had actually raced here before so everybody knew what it was going to be like. The only thing we weren't prepared for was that this seemed like a pro-USA crowd, so when we came under that bridge (Montlake Bridge), man it was loud. It was louder than I've ever heard it, so it was fantastic.

"This place is loud. Part of the reason why is that at the World Championships and the Olympics you are out in the middle of a lake and the fans on the side. Here, everybody's got the front row seat. Obviously, this is a city with good rowing fans. It was nice and loud and it definitely got us fired up."

David Calder

Canada No. 3 seat and former University of Washington rower from 1998-2001.

"Any loss is disappointing. There is a unique relationship between crews when you are the defending champion. I think the United States took huge advantage of that aspect of the relationship between the two crews. They really capitalized on wanting to take down the defending champions. They were successful in doing that.

"It's May 3 and the World Championships are the last week of August. This is motivation. Losing a race is the greatest motivation there is. They did a great job and beat us very well. We're not going to walk around with our heads down, but we're definitely disappointed. We expected more from ourselves today and we have to go back to Victoria and work harder than we have."