MADISON, Wis. – Add Neenah native Maddie Wanamaker to the list of all-time Wisconsin rowers who became Olympians. The former Wisconsin women’s rowing walk-on will race at the Olympics in the women’s four. USRowing made the announcement on Friday at the ongoing Women’s Sweep Boat Olympic Selection Camp in Princeton, New Jersey.
Wanamaker’s international career includes a gold medal at the 2018 World Rowing Championships in the women’s four. She’s a 2017 second-team All-Big Ten pick, Big Ten Distinguished Scholar and UW-Madison graduate, and helped the Badgers to a pair of top-10 finishes at the NCAA rowing championships during her time at Wisconsin.
Wanamaker also rowed in the women’s four at the 2019 World Rowing Championships, along with former Badger and Olympic hopeful Vicky Opitz, where they placed sixth and helped the U.S. earn an Olympic spot in the event.
Wanamaker will become the 16th all-time Wisconsin women’s rower at the Olympics, and bring UW’s total for both men’s and women’s rowing to 27 Olympians.
UW’s first women’s Olympians – Carie Graves, Peggy McCarthy and Jackie Zoch – all won bronze at the 1976 Olympics in the women’s eight in the first Games that included women’s events in Montreal. UW’s first Olympian was Stewart MacDonald, who rowed in the men’s pair with coxswain to fifth place in Mexico City, Mexico, in in 1968.
Opitz, who is also at the selection camp, was not named to the women’s eight or four, but is now competing in the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team Trials III for a chance to earn a spot in the women’s pair. Four crews raced on Friday morning in a time trial that sets up a Saturday final at 7 a.m. CT to determine the U.S. representatives in the event.
Opitz, a four-time world champion in the women’s eight, was at the 2016 Olympic Summer Games as an alternate for Team USA. Among her many career highlights, Opitz rowed with the crew that set a world record in the eight at the 2013 World Rowing Cup III and was the 2018 USRowing Female Athlete of the Year.
At Wisconsin, Opitz was a 2010 CRCA Pocock First-Team All-American and first-team All-Big Ten pick when she helped the Badgers to their first Big Ten rowing championship and a program-best seventh-place finish at the NCAA rowing championships.
The Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 take place July 23 through Aug. 8 in Japan. Final selections to the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team are subject to U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee approval.
