The Canadians, who won the World Rowing Championships in 2007, broke a 35-year streak in which no reigning world champion was able to win Olympic gold. Seiterle was a part of the boat that won the world title a year ago.
This was Seiterle's second trip to the Olympics. He competed at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 as a member of the Canadian double, where he finished 13th.
Canadian rowers as a whole have had a successful Olympics, as they earned four medals -- a gold, a sliver and two bronze -- in the 29th Olympiad. Only Great Britain, with its six medals, bested the Canadians in rowing. Canada had not won a single medal heading into the finals of the rowing races, though it has nine medals to its credit now.
The race was contested in Beijing's Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park, a venue that was newly built for the Olympics.
For the Canadians, the road to the gold was not a smooth one. After a thunderstorm, which delayed the preliminaries by a day, the Canadians had to contend with several bizarre incidents.
Prior to the start, the starting gates came up and inadvertently chopped off the bow ball of their boat. While Brian Price, the coxswain, got the attention of one of the referees, it was decided that the missing bow ball would not have an effect on the race.
Once the race started, the Canadians faced more trouble, this time from the Australians. At about 750 meters into the race, the Australian team drifted into the Canadians' lane, and the Australians almost collided into the rear of the Canadian boat. As it turns out, the Australians had suffered a rudder malfunction.
"We started to pull away, next thing we know, Australia's in our lane," said Jake Wetzel, a silver medalist in the men's four boat in Athens, to the Canadian press. "In 10 years of rowing, I've never seen anything like that. It's just bizarre. All of sudden we saw them coming over and they just about hit the back of our boat.
Despite the setbacks, Seiterle and his teammates were able to cruise through the preliminary rounds, crushing the opposition by finishing in a time of 5:27.69 to qualify for the finals. Second-place Poland was several boatlengths behind the Canadians, crossing the finish in 5:34.95.
"Even when something bad happens, you still end up on top and that's why we train as hard as we do," Seiterle said to the Canadian press. "We don't do it just to win by a second. On a good day, we'll win by 10 seconds. On a moderate day, we'll still win by three or four seconds and on a really crappy day where everything goes wrong, we'll still win."
In the Olympics, only the winner of the preliminary heats earn an automatic berth in the "Final A" race, or the medal round. All other boats must compete in the repechage to qualify for the "Final A" race.
In the finals, the Canadians asserted their dominance again by leading the entire race from start to finish. By the halfway point of the race, the Canadians were already up by two and a half seconds over second-place Great Britain.
In the second 1,000 meters, the British and American crews chipped away at the lead, but could not reel in the Canadians before the finish line.
It was sweet redemption for the five members of the Canadian crew who raced in Athens four years ago. Similary to this year, the Canadians came into the Olympics as heavy favorites, but did not even medal as they finished fifth.
"Gold medals are awarded in the summer, but they're earned in the winter. That was four years of hard winters," Kyle Hamilton said to CBC Sports. Hamilton was one of the men who were in the Athens crew four years ago.
The crew consisted of Kevin Light, Ben Rutledge, Andrew Byrnes, Jake Wetzel, Malcom Howard, Seiterle, Adam Kreek, Hamilton and Price.
"I can't say this is the happiest day of my life, because I got married between Athens and Beijing, and I'm not stupid," chuckled Hamilton in a post-race press conference. "But this is a close second."
All rowing events have been contested for the Olympics. The closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics will be on Sunday, August 24.
