Badgers Set for Olympic Competition
August 12, 2004 | Men's Rowing
The University of Wisconsin is proud to be sending two current and four former athletes to the 2004 Olympic Summer Games in Athens, Greece.
Beau Hoopman and Matt Smith have been chosen to the men's rowing team, while former Badger rower Matt Imes will serve as an assistant coach for the team. Kathy Butler, a 1997 graduate of the University of Wisconsin, will compete for Great Britain in track and field. Current UW swimmers Adam Mania and Carly Piper also qualified for the games with Adam competing for Poland and Carly for the United States. The games, which have already started with soccer, officially get under way with the opening ceremonies on Friday, August 13th.
Hoopman, a native of Plymouth, Wis., will compete with the men 's eight, while Smith, from Woodbridge, Va., will race with the men's lightweight four. Hoopman captained the Badgers during the 2001'02 season, helping the Badger varsity eight to its first Eastern Sprints title since 1946 and a runner-up result in the national championship race. he has since gone on to international success. He won gold at the 2002 Under-23 World Championships in Genoa, Italy in the men's eight and most recently a gold in the men's four at the 2004 BearingPoint Rowing World Cup in Lucerne, Switzerland. Smith led the Badgers as captain for the 1999 '00 campaign, stroking the varsity eight to an eighth-place result at the national championships in that senior season. Like Hoopman, Smith is a veteran of international competition as a four-time U.S. national team member.
Also representing the Badger rowers for the U.S. Olympic rowing team is Imes, who rowed for the UW from 1989'91. He will serve as one of the four assistant coaches for the American contingent.
Butler, a five-time NCAA champion with the Badgers, won the 10,000 meters at the Great Britain Olympic Trials allowing her to compete in the Games.
Edinburgh, Scotland born, she ran a personal best of 31:36.90, which meets the Olympic 'A' standard of 31:45.00. Butler will be making her second appearance in the Olympic Games after finishing 24th in the 5000 meters at the 1996 Games in Atlanta representing Canada. A four-time Canadian national cross country champion, Butler has competed for Great Britain since 2000. She finished 11th at the 2004 World Cross Country Championships in March, leading Great Britain to a bronze-medal finish.
With her fifth-place performance in the final round of the 200-meter freestyle at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials, Piper (Grosse Pointe, Mich.) received a spot on the team. The senior-to-be, who is the first female Badger swimmer to earn an Olympic berth, will compete in the 800-meter freestyle relay. Piper will join Dana Vollmer and Lindsay Benko ' the top two finishers, respectively, in the 200 freestyle ' as well as Kaitlin Sandeno (3rd), Rhi Jeffrey (4th) and Rachel Komisarz (6th). Piper, Sandeno, Jeffrey and Komisarz will likely swim together in the preliminary round of the Olympics, Aug. 18 in Athens. Two will be chosen to join Vollmer and Benko in further rounds, while the other two would be considered alternates. All six would earn a medal should the relay team place.
The University of Wisconsin men's swimming team will also be represented at the Olympic Games as Mania (Hickman, Neb.) finished first in the 100-meter backstroke at the Polish Nationals and Olympic Trials. Mania, who will be a senior in the fall, has dual citizenship in Poland thanks to his parents emigrating from the country just prior to his birth. He will compete in the 100 backstroke at the Olympics after winning the event in a time of 55.45. A time of 55.74 placed eighth at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. Mania also won the 50 backstroke in a time of 25.69.
A handful of UW athletes nearly missed their chance to compete in the 2004 Olympic Games, including Former Badger and nine-time NCAA champion Suzy Favor Hamilton (1986-90). Hamilton hoped to make Athens her fourth Olympic games, but at the last minute she decided at not to run the 1,500-meter final in the U.S. Olympic Track and Field trials because of a hamstring injury. Suzy could have still qualified for the games as the lone American meeting the Olympic 'A' standard time, but when Carrie Tollefson won the Olympic trials and clinched the Team USA berth by running a "B" standard time of 4:06.13, she bumped Favor Hamilton and became the only American to compete in the 1,500 meters. Had Tollefson reached the "A" standard, based on complicated U.S. Track and Field criteria, she would have paved the way for Favor Hamilton to make the team as well.
Along with Suzy Favor Hamilton, former Badgers Isaiah Festa and Jenelle Deatherage just missed Olympic berths in the men's 3000-meter steeplechase and women's 1500 meters, respectively. Festa, a 2003 Wisconsin graduate, finished fourth in the event in a personal best of 8:20.66, but only the top three make the Olympic team. Deatherage, a 1999 Wisconsin graduate, finished fourth, missing a spot on the U.S. team by just 14 hundredths of a second. UW Swimmer Timothy Liebhold also came close with his eight-place finish in the final of the 200 individual medley at the U.S. Olympic trials, but fell short of a spot on the team.
