Gold Rush

Remember that time when Princeton seemed to have a different Nobel Prize winner every day? 

Well, this is sort of like the Olympic version of that. One gold medal Wednesday was followed by two more yesterday, giving Princeton its biggest gold rush ever.

In fact, this is the first time that Princeton has had three different varsity athletes win golds in the same Olympiad. The only other time that Princeton University had three current or former students win gold in the same Olympics was the last one, with Sarah Filler and Claire Thompson in women's hockey and Chloe Kim in the halfpipe.

Princeton's first gold of this week came from Hannah Scott Wednesday in the women's quadruple sculls, in ridiculously thrilling fashion. that was followed by Nick Mead, who started the day with a gold medal in the men's fours, and then Maia Weintraub came on in the championship match to help the United States to gold in the women's team foil.

That's an extraordinary haul. How extraordinary? There are only eight countries that have won more golds than Princeton University has so far. A ninth — Canada — is tied with Princeton.

Yes. Extraordinary. As you recall, Scott's Great Britain boat never led at any point of the race until it nipped the Netherlands in a photo finish.

It was quite a bit different for the men's fours. Oh, and as TB said yesterday, the difference between sculling and rowing is that in sculling, each person in the boat pulls two oars. In rowing, it's one oar each.

Mead was in a United States boat that took the lead early and pretty much was in front the entire way. It looked briefly like New Zealand may have lunged ahead about 250 meters from the finish, but the Americans come up with a final surge and pulled away to win by nearly a full second.

As it became clear that the U.S. boat was going to win, the same British announcers who were so good on the broadcast when Scott won rose for the drama again. And when one of them mentioned Mead, he called him "the old man of the boat."

Technically, that's true. At 29, he was the oldest of the four rowers, with two 27 year olds and a 26 year old. The boat also featured three Ivy Leaguers, as Mead, who came to Princeton from Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia, was joined by Justin Best (Drexel), Michael Grady (Cornell) and Liam Gallagher (Harvard). 

Incredibly, the last time the U.S. won gold in this event was in 1960, outside of Rome. The U.S. had to come back after finishing second in its heat that time and did so convincingly, romping in both its repechage and in the final.

Since then, the Americans had won silver three times and bronze twice. Until yesterday, there had been no gold. The last Princeton men's rower to win gold before Mead was Chris Ahrens in 2004. 

Then there was the women's team foil. Weintraub, who took the year off from Princeton to train for these Games, did not fence in the first two U.S. matches but came off the bench to put up key points in the 45-39 win over Italy in the final.

Weintraub won her final two matches, scoring 11 touches while giving up five. That's a plus-six differential, which also corresponds to how many points the U.S. team won by in the match.

She became the first Princeton fencer to win Olympic gold and the fifth Princeton fencer to win an Olympic medal. The most recent were Maya Lawrence and Susie Scanlan, teammates in 2012 who won bronze in team epee. 

Will there be more gold to be won? Tom George competes today in the men's pairs final. 

Here's the complete #PrincetonInParis schedule for today:

Kathleen Noble (Uganda) - Women’s Single Sculls E Final (E - 4:06 a.m.)
Tom George (Great Britain) - Men’s Pair Olympic Final (A - 5:30 a.m.)
Ashleigh Johnson & Jovana Sekulic (USA) - Women’s Water Polo vs. France (12:30 p.m.)
Kareem Maddox (USA) - 3x3 Basketball vs. France (12:35 p.m.)
Obiageri Amaechi (Nigeria) - Women’s Discus Qualification Group B (2:20 p.m.)
Kareem Maddox (USA)  - 3x3 Basketball vs. China (4:35 p.m.)