Cohen, 26, is one of our fastest single scullers, even beating Mahe Drysdale at the 2011 New Zealand National Rowing Championships at Lake Ruataniwha in Twizel.
Cohen, who was born in Christchurch, took up rowing in 1998, and twice came second in the single scull at the 2003 and 2004 Junior World Championships.
In 2008, Cohen, then paired with Rob Waddell, finished fourth in the Beijing Olympics.
His Rangiora-born partner Sullivan, 25, has won a world championship title every year since 2007, including two under-23 single scull titles.
Nicknamed T-Rex, Sullivan took up rowing at high school in 2001, after an older student told him he was a promising athlete and should take up the sport.
Cohen and Sullivan got together in 2007 when Cohen's partner Matthew Trott got injured ahead of the World Cup in Amsterdam. Despite the short notice, the new pairing cruised into the final, where they finished a respectable fifth.
The pair train hard - earlier this year Sullivan told worldrowing.com the pair row 20-30km most mornings, followed by shorter row in the afternoon, as well as weights training twice a week.
According to Rowing New Zealand's website, Cohen and Sullivan are the smallest pair in the international elite men's heavyweight double scull field, with Cohen weighing 85kg and Sullivan 82kg.
Both study at Waikato University, close to the National Training Centre in Karapiro.
So was their win a surprise?
With 500m to go Cohen and Sullivan were languishing in fourth, but - to the delight of Kiwis staying up late watching back home - the pair are fast finishers. Earlier, the pair won their heat with a blistering time of 6:11.30, before coming second in their semi-final three days later to reach the final.
Cohen and Sullivan came into the Olympics on the back of world championships double sculls titles in 2010 and 2011, as well as two world cup wins in the past year.
What is double sculls?
A double scull is a two-person rowing boat, where each competitor has two oars.
The double scull is faster than the coxless pair, where each rower has just the one oar.
New Zealand's Juliette Haigh and Rebecca Scown came third in the coxless pairs 24-hours before Cohen and Sullivan's come-from-behind win.
Until Cohen and Sullivan came along, New Zealand has never been the best in the world at men's double sculls, although Caroline and Georgina Ever-Swindell dominated the women's event in the mid-late 2000s.
With the double sculls win, New Zealand has now won rowing gold at four successive Olympic Games after Rob Waddell won the single scull in 2000, and the Evers-Swindell twins won the women's double scull in 2004 and 2008.
- HERALD ONLINE
