It’s all about desire, fitness,
and a little power
The year was 1984, the venue Lake Casitas,
and the sporting event the Olympic Games
in Los Angeles. The women’s eight from the
USA stormed to gold in front of a home
crowd after racing over the then standard
women’s distance of 1,000m. Their
competitors were Romania, the
Netherlands, Canada, Great Britain and
South Africa. Little did the new Olympic
Champions know it would take their nation
another 20 years before a women’s eight
would win another Olympic medal.
Our collegiate teams work tremendously hard to
win the national championships and that has really
made my job easier. Then there has also been an
increase in support for the team from our National
Olympic Committee and from the National Rowing
Foundation. Without their support we would never
have gotten to the centre of the podium in 2008!”
At the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, the medal
wait ended with silver and a new World Best Time
during the heats. One Olympic cycle later in Beijing,
it culminated with gold.
Terhaar was named head women’s coach of the
US national rowing team in 2001. Prior to that,
he served as national team assistant coach from
1994 to 2000 under the leadership of former head
women’s coach Hartmut Buschbacher. “It was great.
Lots of work. Only the highest expectations and
no excuses,” says Terhaar of those years.
Behind the successful comeback of the USA
women’s eight stands a coach, Tom Terhaar.
Humbly, he does not credit the turnaround to
himself. “I would say that the USA has always been
there, it’s just that we have had a little better luck
in the past two Olympics,” says Terhaar. “I know I
have the best ‘staff’ in the world to help me with
the women’s eight: the entire US collegiate system.
The former East German coach and the work
he did with the US women from 1993 to 1996 is
what formed Terhaar’s coaching methodology first
and foremost. “I watched some very tough and
dedicated athletes train their way into exceptional
shape and win quite a few races. They worked
harder than what they thought they could, put
in more miles and pulled better ergometer scores
because of Hartmut’s programme,” remembers
Terhaar. But Buschbacher is not Terhaar’s >
