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Mahe Drysdale, singles sculls Olympic champion - Source: Reuters -
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Don't be surprised to see a lot more activity on the rowing machines at your gym this week.
The word "inspirational" tends to be overused in sport, but the wonderful efforts of our rowers at Eton Dorney will be enough to inspire scores of New Zealanders to take up the oars.
I jumped on an erg last Friday, just to see how hard it really is to row 2000 metres. It took me eight minutes, twenty-seconds, and I was absolutely poked. Then I went and watched Mahe Drsydale take a full ninety seconds off my time.
Words don't do justice to the performance of all our rowers. The plaudits they've received over the weekend are thoroughly deserved. They haven't just inspired a nation - they've thrilled us, entertained us, filled us with pride.
All three gold medal races were memorable for different reasons - the amazing storming finish from Cohen and Sullivan, the unprecedented dominance of Bond and Murray, and Mahe Drysdale's intense battle with Czech rival Ondrej Synek.
We're told no country works harder, plans more meticulously, sacrifices more for rowing success than New Zealand, and it's easy to believe. These men and women are relentless in their pursuit of success.
We heard first-hand about this iron-willed dedication on our trip to Invercargill on Friday, where the whole city was embracing local lad Nathan Cohen like a son.
"He worked incredibly hard from a young age", said Invercargill Rowing Club president Ian Hamilton, who has kept a watchful eye on Cohen from the outset.
He told us of the race meet at Twizel a few years ago where Cohen, competing in the single sculls, decided he was going to beat world champion Drysdale.
He led for much of the race before his more experienced counterpart, spurred into action, finished strongly to stave off an upset.
"Nathan said he couldn't remember the last 200 metres of the race", Hamilton told us with a smile.
"That's how knackered he was. He had to have first aid out on the water and when we got him back onto land. That pretty much sums up his attitude to the sport".
The fruits of their remarkable labour sit in stark contrast to the appalling state of affairs in the Caribbean.
The Black Caps have spent most of the past six months trying to demonstrate their famous victory in Hobart last December was a fluke. They can stop trying: they've conclusively proven it.
Aside from opener Martin Guptill and the fast bowlers - whose commitment is never lacking even when wicket-taking ability is - our cricketers give the impression they couldn't care less about winning or losing until they're trudging back to the pavilion cursing their folly.
That isn't true of course, but where our rowers have left no stone unturned in pursuit of world domination, it seems the Black Caps are never adequately prepared, either mentally or physically, for the rigours of Test battle.
How they were allowed to enter a full international tour without the benefit of a single warm-up game is a stain on the administrators' copybook. But once on the field, it's the players who keep making the same silly mistakes.
Don't listen to anyone who tries to tell you the West Indies have suddenly become a force in world cricket again. A couple of outstanding individuals aside, they're a very average team who were made to look even less than that in England before the Black Caps arrived. A drawn Test series should've been the minimum acceptable target.
Sometimes defeat can be the biggest motivator of all. Look at how Drysdale responded to the disappointment of Beijing four years ago. But the Black Caps seem to learn nothing from one loss to the next; they'll tour India in a few short weeks' time and will be thrashed again.
Perhaps rowing will never supercede cricket as our summer sport - it's simply not as accessible, for one thing - but it's certainly gaining plenty of fans while the Black Caps' stuttering form does little to attract new fans to the game.
Just as success breeds success, failure breeds failure and the bright future of our rowing programme contrasts with the ongoing slide of our cricketers into "easybeat" territory.
While our rowers bask in the glory of Olympic gold, the Black Caps now face two weeks of hard work and soul-searching before they head to the subcontinent. Although you suspect that if they'd been working as consistently hard as their colleagues on the water, they wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.