Gobbo '13, US Women's 8 Win Gold at World Championships, Qualify for 2016 Olympics
9/6/2015 12:00:00 AM | Women's Crew
AIGUEBELETTE, France – Brown University women's crew alumna Tessa Gobbo '13 and the United States women's eight boat won its 10th straight global title and qualified for the 2016 Summer Olympics with a win in Sunday's final at the 2015 World Rowing Championships.
Gobbo, the 7-seat in the US boat, helped the Americans clock in with a time of 6:05.65, finishing 2.87 seconds ahead of second-place New Zealand. The US trailed Great Britain by 0.02 seconds at 500 meters before holding a 1.46-second edge on the Brits at the 1,000-meter mark.
- Race Results
- Race Video via World Rowing
- Race Report via World Rowing
- NBCSports.com Race Report
- Brown Olympians through the Years
- Tessa Gobbo Bio on USRowing
Maintaining a 36-second stroke rate for the majority of the race, the Americans built a solid lead over the second half of the race. The US held a boat-length and 3.31-second advantage over New Zealand at the 1,500-meter mark and carried a similar lead for the remainder of the race. The top five boats in the race automatically qualified for the Rio Olympics next summer.
"This is my first gold – I made it," Gobbo said. "Rowing is an offensive sport. There's no defense. We stayed in it. We stayed in our heads and stayed in our race. It was close, but it's pretty clear that as happy as we are to make this 10-year happen, you take it one year at a time."
The US women's eight, one of the USA's top priority boats, has won gold at the world championships in each of the last 10 years, dating back to 2006. Commentators for Sunday's final described the American effort as "bulletproof." The crew trains out of the USRowing Training Center in Princeton, N.J.
A 2013 Brown graduate with a concentration in sociology, Gobbo won an NCAA Championship with the Bears in 2011 and captained the crew in 2013. As a senior, she earned Academic All-Ivy honors and won Brown's Marjorie Brown Smith Award, given to the Bears' most outstanding female varsity athlete.
On the international level, Gobbo won gold in the eight at the 2015 World Rowing Cup 2, took silver in the four at the 2014 World Rowing Championships, and gained gold in the four at the 2013 World Rowing Championships.
