Fuller Hopes to Leave Indelible Mark

If Amy Fuller wins another Olympic medal in rowing, don’t expect her to celebrate the same way she did in her younger, more carefree days.

After winning a silver medal with the U.S. women’s four without coxswain at Barcelona eight years ago, Fuller had the Olympic rings tattooed on her right hip.

The medal, Fuller’s grandmother told her, was awesome. The tattoo was gross.

Then grandma changed her mind.

“She showed everybody,” Fuller told NBC. “We’d be in a restaurant and she’s like, ‘Look at her tattoo!’ You know, so she has me flashing the world and, then, every time something else happened, like when I sailed at America’s Cup or when I went to the ’96 Olympics, my grandma kept saying, ‘Well, get a ’96 under there!’. . . I am like, ‘Grandma, it’s not my resume.’ ”

It would take Fuller’s entire 6-foot frame to list her achievements. The former Westlake High basketball standout is the most decorated rower in U.S. history, a veteran of two Olympics and countless international competitions.

Now 32 and planning to retire after the Sydney Games that start Sept. 15, Fuller is chasing a gold medal with the women’s eight crew.

“I am truly excited about this team,” Fuller said. “We have power, experience and great team dynamics.”

Fuller was talked into rowing for a club in 1987 as a sophomore at UC Santa Barbara and was on the U.S. national team two years later. She has won seven medals at the world championships, including gold with the women’s eight in 1995, and several more at competitions around the world.

She also missed out a few times, none more painful than at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, when the favored U.S. eight placed fourth. Fuller, dejected and tired, retired after the Games.

Fuller almost walked away from rowing four years earlier, when the women’s four without coxswain was eliminated from the Olympics after Barcelona to make room for weight-class events.

But Hartmut Buschbacher, the U.S. national team coach, persuaded Fuller to join the women’s eight. She has been a mainstay on the crew ever since.

Despite her remarkable career, Fuller had to participate with other top rowers in the U.S. Olympic training camp in San Diego, where coaches evaluate the candidates for Sydney over several months. There are no Olympic trials for the U.S. eight crews, which are selected based on individual performance and other factors.

A virtual shoo-in going into the camp, Fuller secured her place on the team by establishing a world record of 6:32.3 on the ergometer to win the women’s open weight division at the 2000 world indoor championships.

The ergometer is a machine that measures strength and endurance in a simulated 2,000-meter race, a test so painful Fuller once described it as “ready. . . set. . . suffer.”

Fuller will be an assistant coach at Stanford after the Sydney Games, which she says are definitely her last Olympics. So she’s soaking in these Olympics as much as possible.

“I love this,” Fuller said. “The competition, the camaraderie, the red, white, and blue.”

And funky tattoos.