Caryn Davies (born April 14, 1982) is an Americanrower. She is the winner of the 2023Thomas Keller Medal,[1] the most prestigious international award in the sport of rowing, and the only American to have ever won this award.[2] She won gold medals as the stroke seat of the U.S. women's eight at the2012 Summer Olympics and the2008 Summer Olympics.[3][4][5] In April 2015 Davies strokedOxford 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.[6][7][8] She was the most highly decorated Olympian to take part in either [men's or women's] race.[9] In 2012 Davies was ranked number 4 in the world by theInternational Rowing Federation. At the2004 Olympic Games she won a silver medal in the women's eight.[4] Davies has won more Olympic medals than any other U.S. oarswoman.[10] The 2008 U.S. women's eight, of which she was a part, was named FISA (International Rowing Federation) crew of the year. Davies is fromIthaca, New York, where she graduated from Ithaca High School, and rowed with the Cascadilla Boat Club. Davies was on theRadcliffe College (Harvard) Crew Team and was a member on Radcliffe's2003 NCAA champion Varsity 8, and overall team champion.[11] In 2013, she was a visiting student atPembroke College, Oxford, where she stroked the college men's eight to a victory in bothTorpids (spring intercollegiate races) and the Oxford UniversitySummer Eights races (for the first time in Oxford rowing history).[12] 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.[13] In 2013, she was inducted into theNew York Athletic Club Hall of Fame and in 2022 into theHarvard University Athletics Hall of Fame.[14]
Caryn Davies was elected president of the United States Olympians and Paralympians Association (USOPA) in 2021.[15] She previously served as a vice president from 2008-2012 and 2016-2019 . She also served as athlete representative to theUSRowing Board of Directors from 2004-2010.
Davies has a degree fromHarvard University (A.B. Psychology, 2005), a J.D. (Doctor of Law) fromColumbia Law School (2013) and an MBA fromOxford University (2015). Davies is the most decorated Harvard Olympian in the sport of rowing.[10] During 2013–2014, Davies served as a clerk to Judge Richard Clifton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in Honolulu, Hawaii. She was an attorney withGoodwin Procter inBoston,Massachusetts from 2015-2019,[16] and is now an attorney in private practice.
Davies was recruited into rowing at 12 years of age. She started rowing competitively a year later in Australia in 1996, at theFriends' School inHobart. A local rowing club also recruited her into single sculling, where groups of teenagers launched off a beach into tidal estuarine waters. Within six months she was the Tasmanian under-15 single sculls champion. Returning from Australia she continued with Cascadilla Boat Club and the Ithaca High School rowing team. In 1998, as a 16-year-old she competed in the world's biggest rowing race, theHead of the Charles in Boston. Because she had already placed in the top three in a junior race at the Canadian Henley the summer before the race, officials insisted on placing her, as the only junior, into the championship category of top senior international rowers; she put up a creditable performance by placing 16th. The following summer (1999) she made her first national team, coming second in the US junior eight inPlovdiv, Bulgaria, followed by a gold medal in a four at the junior world championships inZagreb, Croatia, in 2000, the first gold medal ever by US Junior women.[4][17] She also won the prestigious Stotesbury cup regatta and the Scholastic Rowing Association single sculls in both 1999 and 2000, and the USRowing Youth invitational in 2000, placing her as the top US junior female rower at the time she left high school. Caryn's brother Kenneth also represented the US as a junior rower, and well as rowing atCornell University, achieving the position of Commodore of the Cornell Crew in his senior year and receiving All Ivy Academic Honors for all four years.
Davies rowed for Harvard from 2001 to 2003,[11] leading the team to an NCAA championship in 2003, and again in 2005, after taking a year off for the Olympics. She has again taken a year off fromColumbia Law School to compete in 2012.[18] Most national team training has been based inPrinceton, New Jersey, where the US women's team shares a boathouse and a lake withPrinceton University, whereas winter training was based in San Diego.
Davies has the ability to row starboard, port, or scull at an international level.[19] At 6' 4" she was the tallest member of the U.S. Women's National Team. She was part of the U.S. Olympic women's eight that set a world record in the heat prior to a silver medal in the final in Athens, Greece. She was stroking the eight that repeated the feat in the World Cup in Lucerne in May 2012. As the most experienced oarsperson on the U.S. women's team she acted as a guiding figure: "Remember it's just like the World Championships – the same people doing the same thing – but with more flags."[20]
As of 2019, Davies has won the C.R.A.S.H-Bs three times: first as a junior in 2000,[21] next in the open category in 2005, and in 2019 (at a rowing age of 37), she again won the open category.[22] She serves as the athlete demonstrating rowing technique in video for the Concept II rowing-machine.[23] Davies also promotes youth fitness throughWorld Fit and gives inspirational talks to youth groups.[24]
Davies' hobbies include travel, sailing, downhill skiing, horseback riding, yoga, and ballroom dancing.[4][20] In high school, she competed for several years in competitive downhill skiing, reaching a 7th place in giant slalom in New York State. As a senior at Harvard, she competed on the ballroom team.
