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 Rowing: Bronze good as gold in comeback
Saturday, September 23, 2000 By Jaime Aron, The Associated Press
PENRITH, Australia -- Missy Ryan pushed up her sunglasses and sweatband and gently patted Karen Kraft on the back. The gold medal they had barely lost in Atlanta had slipped away again.
The American tandem -- which retired four years ago and seemed unlikely to return after Ryan donated a kidney to her brother -- led the women's pair for three-quarters of the 2,000-meter race, only to wind up third last night.
But unlike four years ago, when they sobbed on the medals stand after losing as favorites by 0.3 seconds to Australia, Ryan and Kraft wore wide smiles on the medals stand.
The U.S. men's pair of Ted Murphy and Sebastian Bea were surprising silver medalists, making a late charge to force the home-crowd favorite Australians to bronze and knocking the British out of the medals. Gold went to France.
Americans barely missed another medal in the women's double sculls as Ruth Davidon and Carol Skricki finished fourth.
Ryan and Kraft, who were fifth in their only international race this year, led the favored Romanians by .46 seconds at the 1,500 mark but were caught with about 250 meters to go. Australia again finished ahead of Ryan and Kraft for the silver.
In the women's double sculls, the Germany crew was first, the Netherlands second and Lithuania third.
Ryan and Kraft had decided the Atlanta Games would be their last.
Hours after theirloss, Kraft learned that her sister Sarah was not a suitable kidney donor for their brother, Mike Schwen.
She volunteered immediately.
After the successful transplant, Ryan married and moved to San Francisco for her husband's schooling. Kraft was there, too. They lived minutes apart but rarely spoke -- until the day Ryan called Kraft and asked, "What do you think?"
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