LYNN — It’s not every day that you get to meet an Olympic gold medalist, but a group of kids at the Demakes Family YMCA of Lynn had that privilege Wednesday afternoon when two-time gold medalist rower Caryn Davies paid a visit to the city to celebrate National Olympic Day with the North Shore Maritime Center.
When the opportunity to have Davies visit the YMCA was presented to North Shore Maritime Center President William Goldenheim, it was an offer he simply couldn’t refuse.
“This is actually an opportunity I got when I was in high school and got to meet an Olympic gold medalist as well,” said Goldenheim, who is also the coach of the newly-formed St. Mary’s crew team. “It’s been 20 years now and that experience has still stuck with me all this time and it’s really cool that these kids get to experience the same thing.”
Davies is a three-time Olympic medalist in the women’s eight competition, winning a silver medal in Athens in 2004 before winning gold in Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012. She also rowed at Harvard, where she was a two-time national champion, and in England, where she stroked Oxford to a win in the first-ever women’s Oxford/Cambridge boat race.
After passing around her Olympic medals for the kids — who ranged in age from elementary to high school — to see and touch, she talked about some of the most important lessons she’s learned in her 25 years of competitive athletics.
Davies even revealed that she attempted to make a comeback on the 2020 (now 2021) Tokyo Olympic team, but she was cut two weeks ago after dealing with injuries since January.
Davies closed out her visit by challenging all the kids in the room to dream big and work hard to achieve their goals before taking questions from anyone who had them — including a number of members of the St. Mary’s crew team.
Goldenheim hopes that Davies’ visit will inspire some of the kids to take up rowing and reach out to the North Shore Maritime Center, which will be running clinics for children and adults all throughout the summer.
“I think that any number of kids on the water is a success to me, because this is a sport that simply doesn’t exist in Lynn right now,” said Goldenheim. “It’s a huge city and an awesome city, and I think we deserve to have this sport here. I know that everyone is focused on football and basketball, but we’re not trying to change that — we’re trying to add to it.”
