As they devoured the stack of onion rings, they hammered out their plan.
Lock in. No shortcuts. No excuses.
“We collectively bought in as a boat,” Nick Mead said. “We wanted to feel like there were no stones unturned.”
It was the fall of 2023. The U.S. men’s four crew — Mead, Michael Grady, Justin Best and Liam Corrigan — huddled in their booth at Ford’s Garage in Sarasota, Florida, not far from their training site. This was their spot, a retro-style diner with onion rings served on oil tubes and a giant Ford Model T hanging from the ceiling.
“You may or may not believe such a place exists,” Corrigan said. “It’s phenomenal, top-tier.”
As they soaked in the car-themed atmosphere, the four men strategized. This crew had just taken silver at the 2023 World Rowing Championships, finishing 2.02 seconds behind Great Britain. The Olympics were 10 months away. They needed a gameplan.
“We agreed on a couple tenants as a crew,” Best continued as he sat in a media tent at the Trocadéro in Paris. “Training, recovery, our lifestyles — we wanted to feel like there were no stones unturned.
“All of us said, ‘It’s not going to be easy. We’re going to complain a lot, but if we do those things correctly and together, it’s going to be OK.”
Best reached forward and peeled a gleaming Olympic gold medal off the table — his gold medal. “Sure enough, this is the result of that.”
No complaints now.
It took sacrifice. They routinely woke up well before sunrise. They eliminated late nights. They missed weddings, funerals and everything in between.
And on Thursday afternoon at the idyllic Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium in Paris, they became Olympic champions. They’re the first American men’s four since the 1960 Rome Olympics to win gold — and the first U.S. men’s boat of any kind to win at the Olympics since 2004.
“I've watched videos of the 2004 men probably 150 times,” Best said. “I know how impactful that was for me. And now I get to hold something of a similar rank.”
The path to their gold-clinching victory was grueling — and Thursday's race mirrored that. The Americans stormed to an early lead in a stacked field that included reigning world champion Great Britain and a dominant New Zealand boat that had won the most recent World Rowing Cup.
The U.S. lead was significant at first. But with 600 meters left, the Kiwis accelerated, gaining on the U.S. four. For a moment, it looked like New Zealand was about to steal the lead.
Then, Corrigan, sitting in the stroke position, barked out a crucial command: “Red!”
“Red” sends a clear message to the others: Go all-out.
“When you hear ‘red,’ that means you just better start seeing red real soon,” Grady said. “You go as hard as you can.”
The immediate result is physics — the boat speeds up. But as with so much in life and in sports, psychology looms large.
“It puts it in the back of [New Zealand’s] mind that their move didn't work,” Best said. “And this is how we push back. They didn’t have another response to that."
“Red” worked wonders. The U.S. surged back ahead and crossed the finish line 0.85 seconds ahead of the Kiwis and to a gold medal.
The signal originated with 1984 Olympic silver medalist Tim McLaren, a former Australian sculler who coached some of the U.S. squad ahead of the Tokyo Games.
“He’s very sophisticated in his sense of language,” Grady said. “It’s a little bizarre, to be honest. He taught us the call ‘red.’ It really drove home what you need to accomplish when you hear that word.”
Thanks to red, the U.S. four has gold.
“Strangers on the street are coming up to us and asking for pictures in broken English,” Best said, admiring his medal. “They don’t even know what event we do, but they hold it in high regard.”
This wasn’t just the first men’s four Olympic title in 64 years — the medal served as sweet relief for all of U.S. rowing, which frustratingly failed to earn a single medal at the Tokyo Games.
“Hopefully, this inspires the next generation of oarsmen and oarswomen to take the mantle and say, ‘Hey, why not me?’" Best said. “Hopefully they see results similar and show the American excellence I know we have.”