As Great Britain's coxless four crossed the Olympic finishing line, only three of its crew raised their arms in triumph. Bowman Jim Cracknell, No. 3 seat Tim Foster and stroke Matthew Pinsent punched the air. The fourth man slumped forward, arms by his side. Steven Redgrave didn't move. His lungs burning and his muscles aching, he sat in the midst of pandemonium: Pinsent stood up in the boat, climbing over Foster to hug Redgrave before toppling into the water; spectators-British and non-British-cheered wildly; the defeated crews saluted from their boats. Redgrave didn't even look up to acknowledge the roaring tribute of the 22,000-plus spectators. He didn't have to-his rowing had spoken for him.

The crew's 5 min. 56.24 sec. win on the 2,000-m course had just secured the 38-year-old his fifth gold medal from five consecutive Olympic Games: a feat no other endurance athlete has accomplished. Only Hungarian team saber fencer Aladar Gerevich has bettered Redgrave's record, having won gold at the six Olympics held from 1932 to 1960. It seems unlikely that Redgrave's five from five will be matched in the modern era, let alone beaten. (To attempt it, says Pinsent, himself a gold medalist at three Games, would be a "meaningless quest.") His crewmates call him the ultimate Olympian; his competitors agree. Says Australian stroke Bo Hanson of the chance of a repeat: "I doubt it."

Was the outcome ever in doubt? Not according to the British crew. Asked when he knew they had the race won on Sept. 23 over the Italian and Australian crews, Redgrave-who now has 17 Olympic and world championship titles, including an unbeaten run in the mid-1990s of 61 victories in the coxless pairs-said: "It was all over at the first 200 m. We'd moved into a comfortable lead and no one comes past us." And that's precisely the way the rowing world wanted it. The feat has been celebrated not just as an individual achievement, but as the product of a unique mix of athleticism, grace and stamina. The British revealed that rowers from New Zealand and Australia had approached them before the race and said they hoped the British would win-just not by too much. Redgrave says an elderly New Zealand man confided: "I really want you to win. The only problem is that you are racing my son."

But in the single sculls, another New Zealander was about to give his countrymen something to cheer about. Just after his wife Sonia came sixth in the women's final, reigning world champion, Web designer and judo exponent Rob Waddell, 25, took to the Penrith Lakes course knowing he had to beat defending Olympic champion Xeno Müller of Switzerland. Having twice won the world indoor rowing championship-fought out on ergometer rowing machines-Waddell was regarded as the fastest man in the rowing world. And the contest was all it promised to be, with Waddell chasing Müller (behind by 0.22 sec. at the 1,000-m mark and by 0.52 sec. at 1,500 m) before powering past him at 1,600 m in the space of 10 strokes. By the time the Kiwi's bow crossed the line, he was almost 2 sec.-about a boat length-in front.

The win gave New Zealand its first gold of the Games and enshrined Waddell in the national sporting pantheon above the All Blacks rugby team. It's a fitting reward for a man who, in the solitude of single sculls, has had to cope with a serious heart condition which, without medication and careful monitoring, can raise his pulse to 300 beats a minute. That handicap so pervades his rowing life that the 2-m, 97-kg athlete partly credited his presence on the Olympic podium to his cardiologist.

Sonia Waddell quipped that her fastest 500 m on Sept. 23 came after her race, as she hurried to shore to watch her husband compete. On the lakeside winners' pontoon, Waddell, his hearing impaired by a popping of his ears he says is caused by exertion, appeared disoriented as he gazed into the crowd. When Sonia could finally make her way down the embankment, the pair embraced and the new Olympic champion, a farmer's son who grew up in Pio Pio in King Country before settling in Cambridge, whispered: "I did it."

Rowing in Sydney was a catalog of upsets as well as triumphs. The U.S. men's eight had a disastrous campaign (the three-time world champions came second last in the final). The host nation enjoyed only modest success: 10 Australian crews in the finals produced five medals, none of them gold, surrendering their country's world No. 1 ranking. There was elation for Belarus when sculler Ekaterina Karsten defended her Atlanta crown in a thrilling photo finish with Bulgaria's Rumyana Neykova-the pair split by 0.01 sec. And joy for Romania in the women's eight, when Elisabeta Lipa took her fourth gold medal in succession. But in the end, one name rose above them all.