COURTESY ANN WRIGHT
A USA Olympic Rowing team practiced this past week at Ala Wai.
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The U.S. Olympic rowing team left Honolulu for Japan on Wednesday after a week of training at the Ala Wai Canal.
There are 11 returning Olympians with six medals among the 37 team members. Rowing competition starts July 23, the first day of the Games.
The U.S. won two medals in the 2016 Games at Rio de Janeiro. Gevvie Stone, who won a silver in the women’s single sculls in 2016, is competing in her third Olympics. The women’s eight will be trying to win its fourth consecutive gold.
A total of nine U.S. crews are scheduled to compete, including the women’s single sculls, women’s double sculls, lightweight women’s double sculls, women’s quadruple sculls, women’s pair, women’s four, men’s four, women’s eight and men’s eight. The U.S. was the only country to qualify all seven of its women’s boats.
Third-time Olympian Meghan Musnicki said the team came here strictly for business.
“We’re there for a job. It’s not sight-seeing or like, we’re not going surfing while we’re in Hawaii, or like, going to go to this big luau, we’re likely going to be isolated in our hotel rooms, or else working out at the boathouse,” Musnicki said in a report by WHEC-TV in Rochester, N.Y., before the team left for Hawaii.