Women’s rowing: Susan Francia, United States

Susan Francia was first to realize it was over, to throw her arms in the air and start an American celebration.

“I looked over and saw the finish line,” Francia said. “The rest of the boat was still rowing. I put my oar down. I was done.”

A Philadelphia-area high school graduate who was born in Hungary, Francia first ventured to Boathouse Row when she was a sophomore at Penn. By senior year, she was an all-American. Barely more than five years after she got in that first boat, she is at the top of her sport, on the gold-medal winning U.S. Olympic women’s eight with coxswain.

Francia came to the United States when she was almost 3 years old, when her mother, a molecular biology professor, took a job at Temple.

“On the Schuylkill … at college – that’s where I fell in love with this sport,” said Francia, 25, who continues a Quakers tradition. She is the 11th Penn female rower to compete in the Olympics.

Philadelphia Inquirer