JPC: Did you wear your medal around Athens?
CD: I did wear it out one night, but I tucked it in my shirt. But then after that I just put it in my pocket. People around here too ask me, “Why don’t you wear it? I’d have a big shirt with big arrows saying, ‘Hey look at this!’’’ But then you kind of just get known as the girl that wears the medal around.
JPC: How did you celebrate your silver?
CD: How did I celebrate? How would you celebrate? I got really drunk!
JPC: Was it a five day celebration?
CD: I was planning to go all week, with a vengeance, but I did a pretty good job of taking care of myself…. I did get many what I call UPIs, unidentified party injuries. I came home with these bruises…The coolest thing ever were the parties thrown by Sports Illustrated. They were at the biggest club in Athens, right on the beach, huge. There were like five bars and a swimming pool, which was interesting because drunk people and a swimming pool is not a good combination. Completely open bar, and it was one of those very exclusive parties were you either had to be an athlete or know someone who knew someone who was really important. It was mostly Americans, Canadians, and Australians, all people between the age of 20 and 35, all amazingly fit, and I was just like “Wow.” I had to leave early, though, because I cut my foot. I was dancing around and my feet were slipping around, so I walk off the dance floor and my feet were covered in blood. And I was like “That’s bad. I can’t feel anything.” So I went to the bathroom to clean it up, and one of my teammates was in there and she was like, “Oh my God! You need to go to the hospital and get stitches right now.” And I was like “Oh, I’ll be fine. Let me dance till the party’s over then I’ll get stitches.” And she did the “I am overriding anything you say because you are too drunk to make your own decisions.” She hailed a cab and put me in it and was like “See ya, I’m going back to the party.”
JPC: Any other escapades in the Olympic Village?
CD: My friend and I decided that we were going to try to get a dance party started in the dining hall. So we went and talked to a few of the people working there and were like, “Do you think you could crank up the music and turn down the lights?” They couldn’t turn down the lights, but they did turn up the music, but they didn’t have the kind of music we were talking about. It was just like the Greek folk music. It turned out being kind of cool because a lot of the dining hall staff started doing Greek folk dance and holding hands, so a bunch of athletes were standing in a circle around them clapping. It kind of turned into a dance party anyways, just not the kind that I was interested in starting.
JPC: How did you find the Greek people?
CD: They were very excited about the Olympics, very welcoming. One of my favorite memories was when I went into town to do some shopping. I was stopped every two minutes by someone who wanted to ask me about being an athlete and how much they were excited to have the Olympics here and see my medal if I mentioned I had one. It was one of the only times you’ll be so welcome and people will be so friendly all the time. You’re not just an anonymous person walking around—you’re an athlete.
JPC: What was your favorite part of the Olympics?
CD: Meeting other athletes, and mostly other rowers...Some of my teammates would get mad at me because they would be looking for me and I’d be off talking to people. That’s the main reason why I row, because I just really like to meet other people, and it gives you such an opportunity to go places and see things and meet people.
JPC: Least favorite part?
CD: The transportation was not good. They did a good job with what they had, but it took so long to get places. That was definitely the most annoying part for me. I didn’t get to do all the things I wanted to do and get to all the places I wanted to go, because of time constraints, mostly based on transportation.
JPC: How were the Closing Ceremonies? (Davies and her teammates couldn’t make the Opening Ceremonies because their first race was too close to the event).
CD: We couldn’t hear when they were making the speeches, because the acoustics were not very good, maybe just where we were, so we couldn’t really hear what was going on, so we were like “La, La, La,” not really paying attention to what was going on. Plus a lot of people had been partying and drinking that entire week, so people were just standing there sweating like “I’m so tired. I’m still hung over.”
They made this big announcement like: “Do not light your little thing up until we tell you to.” Because it was supposed to be like, “A child bringing light to the world, and it spreads to everybody,” but half the people weren’t listening. The athletes were pretty good at the beginning. None of us had our lights on.
But then once we started looking at the crowd and the fans and it was like, “Hey they have their lights on!” so we all started to turn our lights on, and I think we completely ruined the effect.
—Staff writer J. Patrick Coyne can be reached at coyne@fas.harvard.edu.