Excerpts from men's eight press conference and interviews.
Andrew Byrnes, Canadian men's eight
In response to question about rowing against Jake Cornelius of the US men's eight, with whom Byrnes had rowed at Cascadilla Boat Club:
Andrew Byrnes: True story about Jake - when I first was getting acquainted with rowing, a rowing coach took me aside and said "look, we're going to do an erg test which is common for rowing," and he said "just sit here behind Jake and do what he does." And he went 6:37 and I went 6:39. I just did what he did. So he's definitely a guy who helped me get my foot into rowing and we had a lot of good memories of rowing together.
When we both got started neither of us knew where our rowing careers would end up. One thing leads to another, you keep going down the road. It's extreme testament to the club that we had there, two of the three people are actually here at this Olympic Games, the third person being Caryn Davies.
Greg Searle, GB men's eight
Interviewer: How do you compare this to what happened I think 20 years ago to the day.
Searle: Yeah, I feel proud of the way we raced today, tho I am slightly disappointed about the result. All nine of us said that we wanted to be able to look ourselves in the mirror and have given it our all and not have any regrets. And I think we all - I know we all feel that, because I know that we gave it everything we could. We took it on in the first half of the race, we knew we would be paying in the second half of the race. We knew the crowd would be amazing, and I think the crowd overdid it, the crowd was unbelievable in the last 500, and we needed them to bring us home, and despite having all that support we still couldn't quite do enough ourselves to hold the lead position in the last 500. But I'm incredibly proud of the performance that we all put in together, the work we've done in the last three years, and longer for some of these guys, to be where we were. To hit the front at the right time was what we aimed to do, we just couldn't hang on in the end. So there is a feeling of disappointment in the outcome, but feeling of pride in the input.
In response to a later question about his wife's somewhat racy comments in the papers before the regatta.
Searle: The support of my family is everything to me. I knew when I came back to do this, there would be some tough choices, which would impact on my wife and my kids. And Jenny helped me make the decision in the first place to do this, and she supported me the whole way down the line. I put her through the mill in Sydney, when she had to come down there when she was emotional and pregnant with my daughter, Josie, and watched me come in fourth, and I was desperate for her not to do the same thing today. On the podium today we felt disappointed that we hadn't won, but I felt so much better that I was on the podium and had a medal around my neck. Partly for her and partly for my kids, that they have seen it have a happy ending albeit not the ending that we really wanted. But I can't express enough how thankful I am for them supporting me through this, as it's not been easy for them.
Mike Spracklen, coach of the Canadian men's eight
In response to a question about whether he will continuing coaching in Canada:
Mike Spracklen: We'll have to see, but for myself really the only two things that might determine otherwise, the first is my wife and the last is my health.
Interviewer: Mike, can you give us a couple lines of the poem that you recited?
Spracklen: Oh, which ones?
Interviewer: The good ones.
Interviewer 2: You said something about each guy individually and Malcolm's the one who told us about the poem. He said to ask you what you said. Do you remember that?
Interviewer: What about the ending?
Interviewer 2: The ending, the last two lines.
Spracklen: I cannot remember word for word, but what I said was that I have one last request that I've never asked of anyone before: Win the race for me.
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