Now a four-time Olympic rower. Megan “Moose” Musnicki (pictured right) gave up rowing after Tokyo, got married, and at age 39 found her first real job, working in human resources for a data infrastructure company in the Bay Area. But the siren sounded at the 2022 Henley Royal Regatta in Oxfordshire and, while she was competing for fun, she and her partner won.
“It showed that I was competitive with the rest of the group who had been training full time,” the athlete said. Women's healthremembering how she realized there was another Olympics in her. “If I like it [training]If I can cope with stress physiologically, why not?”
Megan's husband Skip Kiel turned out to be a rowing coach, and she began training with his staff of mostly male athletes while maintaining her full-time job. And she continued to work remotely, training from 7:15 a.m. to 4:15 p.m., when she returned to the national team's training base in Princeton, New Jersey, in early 2024, hoping to make the Paris team.
Not that it wasn't a couple's trip by any means—”He loves me and supports me and knew this was my dream”—but Skip is also making his Olympic debut as coach of the U.S. men's team.
“This is not a sport you do for the money,” Megan said. “You don’t play this sport for people to recognize you. You do it because you love it.”
