 In 2015 at Aiguebelette | ||||||||||||||||||
| Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Born | February 21, 1988 (age 36) Jackson, Michigan, U.S. | |||||||||||||||||
| Height | 6 ft 0 in (1.83 m) | |||||||||||||||||
| Sport | ||||||||||||||||||
| Country | United States | |||||||||||||||||
| Sport | Rowing | |||||||||||||||||
| Event(s) | Women's sweep and sculling (W4x, W4-, and W8+) | |||||||||||||||||
| College team | Wisconsin Badgers | |||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Grace Latz (born February 21, 1988) is an American rower [1] , Olympian, artist, and announcer.
Latz started rowing as a walk-on athlete at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As a member of Badger women's rowing, she won a Big Ten Championship in the 2V8+ in 2008. In 2010, she helped the crew win its first and to-date only Big Ten Team Championship [2] . Latz received the university's student-athlete community service award for co-founding ReThink Wisconsin, a recycling and sustainability program for on-campus athletic facilities. ReThink Wisconsin's founding group also included comedian Charlie Berens. [3] Latz was a three-year member of the Iron Shield Society.
Following her graduation, Latz rowed two seasons for Vesper Boat Club in Philadelphia. Representing the Vesper Tigers, Grace was a three-time competitor at the Henley Royal Regatta, Henley finalist in 2013 in the Princess Grace Challenge, and won the Head of the Charles in the women's championship four. She is one of two female lifetime members of Vesper Boat Club.
In 2014, Latz won a bronze medal at the World Rowing Championships at the Bosbaan in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in the women’s quadruple sculls [4] . In 2015 Latz, Kristine O'Brien, Adrienne Martelli and Grace Luczak took the gold medal in the coxless four at the 2015 World Rowing Championships in Aiguebelette, France. [5] In 2016, Latz was a finalist in the women’s quadruple sculls in the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, placing fifth. At the 2017 World Championships in Sarasota, Florida, Latz placed fourth in the women's eights.
By earning her spot on the 2016 Olympic team, Latz continued the streak for the University of Wisconsin to have an alumni compete in rowing at every Olympic Games since 1968 [6] . The streak has continued on through Paris 2024.
Latz was one of four Olympians selected for the Paris 2024 Olympian-Artist Program to implement collaborative and community-based art. Through reassembling donated uniforms and equipment from Olympic sports through a local recycling center, she created a large-scale tapestry of the Olympic rings with the support senior Parisian citizens in the lead up to the 2024 Olympics. The piece will be on display during the Paris 2024 Games at Clubhouse 24 and will subsequently become part of the collection of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Latz was previously selected for the Tokyo 2020 Olympian-Artist Program, however, that community-based project was postponed and eventually cancelled following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Latz was hired to announce the 2024 US Olympic and Paralympic Trials - Rowing together with Lindsay Shoop. Latz was also part of the broadcasting teams for the 2024 Big Ten Women's Rowing Championships, 2024 NCAA Women's Rowing Championships, and has co-hosted USRowing's Youth National Championships broadcast since 2023.
The Wisconsin Badgers Crew is the rowing team that represents the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Rowing at the University dates back to 1874. The women's openweight team is an NCAA Division I team. The men's and lightweight women's programs compete at the Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) Championship Regatta because the NCAA does not sanction a men's or lightweight women's national championship. Chris Clark has been the men's head coach since 1996 and Bebe Bryans was the women's head coach from 2004-2023.
Dame Katherine Jane Grainger is a British former rower and current Chair of UK Sport. She is a 2012 Summer Olympics gold medallist, four-time Olympic silver medallist and six-time World Champion. She served as Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University between 2015 and 2020, and is currently Chancellor of the University of Glasgow.
Lightweight rowing is a category of rowing where limits are placed on the maximum body weight of competitors. According to the International Rowing Federation (FISA), this weight category was introduced "to encourage more universality in the sport especially among nations with less statuesque people".
John Brendan Kelly Sr. was an American triple Olympic champion, the first in the sport of rowing. The Philadelphia-based Kelly also was a multimillionaire in the bricklaying and construction industry. He also was involved in politics, serving as Pennsylvania secretary of revenue and running unsuccessfully for mayor of Philadelphia in the 1935 Philadelphia mayoral election.
Frances Houghton MBE is a 5 time Olympic rower (2000–2016), 4 times World Champion and 3 times Olympic Silver medallist.
Caryn Davies is an American rower. She is the winner of the 2023 Thomas Keller Medal, the most prestigious international award in the sport of rowing, and the only American to have ever won this award. She won gold medals as the stroke seat of the U.S. women's eight at the 2012 Summer Olympics and the 2008 Summer Olympics. In April 2015 Davies stroked Oxford University to victory in the first ever women's Oxford/Cambridge boat race held on the same stretch of the river Thames in London where the men's Oxford/Cambridge race has been held since 1829. She was the most highly decorated Olympian to take part in either [men's or women's] race. In 2012 Davies was ranked number 4 in the world by the International Rowing Federation. At the 2004 Olympic Games she won a silver medal in the women's eight. Davies has won more Olympic medals than any other U.S. oarswoman. The 2008 U.S. women's eight, of which she was a part, was named FISA crew of the year. Davies is from Ithaca, New York, where she graduated from Ithaca High School, and rowed with the Cascadilla Boat Club. Davies was on the Radcliffe College (Harvard) Crew Team and was a member on Radcliffe's 2003 NCAA champion Varsity 8, and overall team champion. In 2013, she was a visiting student at Pembroke College, Oxford, where she stroked the college men's eight to a victory in both Torpids and the Oxford University Summer Eights races. In 2013–14 Davies took up Polynesian outrigger canoeing in Hawaii, winning the State novice championship and placing 4th in the long-distance race na-wahine-o-ke-kai with her team from the Outrigger Canoe Club. In 2013, she was inducted into the New York Athletic Club Hall of Fame and in 2022 into the Harvard University Athletics Hall of Fame.
The Vesper Boat Club is an amateur rowing club located at #10 Boathouse Row in the historic Boathouse Row of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1865 as the Washington Barge Club, the club's name was changed to Vesper Boat Club in 1870.
Yasmin Farooq is an American rowing cox and the head coach of the University of Washington women's rowing team. She graduated from Waupun High School in 1984 at Waupun, Wisconsin. She attended the University of Wisconsin where she joined the rowing team in 1984 as a coxswain. She was a member of the 1986 national champion JV eight and served as captain and MVP of the team her senior year. A two-time Olympian and world champion in rowing, Farooq later became a college coach at Stanford University where she helped the Cardinal win its first ever Pac-12 and NCAA titles in rowing. At the University of Washington, her team swept the NCAA Championship for the first-time in history, then repeated the feat in 2019 setting NCAA records in all three events. She has been named Pac-12 coach of the year six times and national coach of the year three times. She was inducted into the USRowing Hall of Fame in 2014 and awarded the Ernestine Bayer Woman of the Year award by USRowing in 2017. In 2021, Farooq was inducted into the Wisconsin Athletics Hall of Fame.
Esther Ruth Lofgren is an American rower and an Olympic gold medalist. She won the gold medal in the women's eight at the 2012 Summer Games in London. Lofgren is a graduate of Harvard College, where she rowed for Radcliffe and was a two-time All-American. She is an eight-time member of the U.S. National Rowing Team and a seven-time World Championship medalist.
Kristin Hedstrom is an American rower. Growing up in Concord, Massachusetts, she attended Concord-Carlisle High School until her graduation in 2004. She then attended the University of Wisconsin, where she graduated in 2008 with a degree in Business Management. She currently resides in Oakland, California where she was affiliated with the California Rowing Club. She is now a personal trainer who works one-on-one with rowers around the country.
Kara Michelle Kohler is an American female crew rower. She won the bronze medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics in the quadruple sculls event. She also has a World Championship gold medal in the coxless four and a World Championship bronze in the single sculls.
Adrienne Elizabeth Martelli is an American female crew rower from University Place, Washington. She took an Olympic bronze medal in 2012 and a gold medal in the 2015 World Championships.
Eve Macfarlane is a New Zealand rower. Described as a "natural rower", she went to the 2009 World Rowing Junior Championships within a few months of having taken up rowing and won a silver medal. She represented New Zealand at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London as the country's youngest Olympian at those games. She was the 2015 world champion in the women's double sculls with Zoe Stevenson. At the 2016 Summer Olympics, they came fourth in the semi-finals and thus missed the A final.
Genevra Lea 'Gevvie' Stone is an Olympic American rower from Newton, Massachusetts. She is a graduate of Princeton University and Tufts University School of Medicine.
Polly Swann is a British rower and a member of the Great Britain Rowing Team. She is a former World and European champion in the women's coxless pairs, having won the 2013 World Rowing Championships at Chungju in Korea, and the 2014 European Rowing Championships at Belgrade, Serbia with her partner Helen Glover. At the 2016 Summer Olympics she won a silver medal in the women's eight.
Olivia Coffey is an American rower. She is a three-time world champion and an Olympian. She won the gold medal in the quad sculls at the 2015 World Rowing Championships. Coffey was in the winning Cambridge crew of The Boat Race 2018.
Grace Luczak (Fattal) (born May 24, 1989 in Royal Oak, Michigan) is an American Olympic rower.
Kristine O'Brien is an American rower. In 2015 O'Brien, Adrienne Martelli, Grace Latz and Grace Luczak took the gold medal in the coxless four at the 2015 World Rowing Championships.
Lucy Spoors is a New Zealand rower. She is a 2019 world champion winning the women's eight title at the 2019 World Rowing Championships.
Michelle Sechser is an American rower. She competed in the women's lightweight double sculls event at the 2020 Summer Olympics. She is set to compete at the 2024 Summer Olympics in the women's lightweight double sculls event.
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