Associated Press
[Source: AP]
The journey from nowhere to an Olympic gold medal is a tale as old as time.
Just as well-worn, but far less explored, are the stories about great athletes who realize they can’t make it anywhere unless they have a way to bankroll the trip.
“The Boys in the Boat” is Hollywood and director George Clooney’s way of stringing those plot lines together. That it opens Christmas Day, a mere seven months before the start of the Paris Olympics, is good fortune for the people who oversee rowing in the U.S. and know the general public mostly either a) doesn’t think about that sport or b) sees it as the exclusive playground for East Coast and Ivy League elites.
USRowing worked with producers of the movie to sponsor dozens of screenings across the country with two purposes: raising funds for an organization that received about $3.5 million of its $15 million budget in 2023 from charitable donations, and building awareness across racial and socioeconomic lines.
One jarring stat: In 2021, a study found that only 2% of women who competed in NCAA rowing were Black. (Men’s rowing isn’t sanctioned by the NCAA, and so, wasn’t part of the study.)
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