Team USA rower Justin Best, a Kennett Square native, drew inspiration from Jason Kelce’s speech at the Philadelphia Eagles‘ Super Bowl parade in 2018 before winning gold at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, writes Tom Dierberger for Sports Illustrated.
Best cued up the video — one of his favorites — a few days before the big race. He was there when Kelce gave the speech and still remembers how excited he was during the occasion.
“So all these years later, bringing that [underdog] mentality; I wish I had a dog mask because I’d put that on,” he said. “Go Birds.”
During the speech, Kelce gave shoutouts to the team’s entire roster.
“We were a bunch of underdogs,” he said. “And you know what underdogs is? A hungry dog. … Hungry dogs run faster.”
Best, and his own cast of underdogs in Nick Mead, Michael Grady, and Liam Corrigan, posted a time of 5:49.03 and managed to beat the New Zealand team by less than a second.
The team won the USA’s first gold medal in the men’s four since the 1960 Olympic Games, ending a decades-long drought.
Read more about Justin Best winning Olympic gold for the US and Chester County in Sports Illustrated.
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