When Stewart MacDonald started what has become a tradition, legacy and selling point 40 years ago, he remembers being something of an oddity.
Having completed his freshman year at the University of Wisconsin, he qualified for the 1968 U.S. Olympic rowing team as the coxswain in the pair boat. He came back to the UW rowing team as an Olympian who had never coxed a varsity race for the Badgers.
Four years later, he was back in the Olympics, joined by another UW rower. In 1976, two more men’s rowers added their names to the list, and the UW women’s program started a tally of its own with three Olympians.
….When Micah Boyd joins 2004 gold medalist and former UW teammate Beau Hoopman in the men’s eight in Beijing next week, he will become the 25th name on the list of rowers who competed for the Badgers and in the Olympics.