I feel like you haven't been paying attention. I'm surprised at your use of South Africa given that they rarely win more than one medal at a time. Oh, and the South African LW2x is stroked by a girl who rowed in the US, winning medals for the US. The SA Olympic LW gold medal 4 was an impressive performance given that those guys have never medaled in any other events. Could've had something to do with a nice inside lane on a cross wind day that caused the British coaches to scream and yell at the fairness committee and cause all days after that day to be reseeded at the Olympics. But what do i know!
If you think the US women's team has better technique than the US mens team, you must not watch them row much. Superior technique has 0 to do with the women's success. Watch some races. The success of the women's team rests nearly entirely on the unparalleled collegiate feeder system they have. There is a level of funding for collegiate women that means there are competitive programs all over the country, hundreds of scholarships available, and they get incredible athletes to train through college and join the national team. These athletes, for whatever reasons, are more likely to stay around for multiple cycles, which again is a huge help. The women's team has ridiculous ergs compared to the world stage. Their ergs are far far superior to their competition.
The US reputation for sloppy technique was gained under Mike Teti, but it's just not a reality any more. Watch any of the world championships from the past three years and listen to the commentators talk about how smooth the US teams row. You can't miss it. Your comment about the US stroke seat was one picture in a sprint piece. Your picture of the Olympic four, was one picture during the high 20. You could dig through tons of photos and find one picture of nearly every rower that's out of time somewhere. That's me by the way, and that was three years out of college, and I won a medal at my first Olympics. How did Triggs-Hodge and Tom James do at their first Olympics? B final. I'm sure their technique was great though. And the guy who coached me for four years leading up to the Olympics, happened to be Australian who coached multiple Aussie teams to Olympic medals. Maybe you should be talking about how much Australian coaches don't focus on technique and how shitty they are at coaching. Or maybe you're just misinformed.
When the US beat the british four and british 8 at the Lucerne World cup in 2013, was their technique shitty? When the US 4 got silver last year at the world championship was their technique shitty? When the mens eight got third in 2013, or won the world cup last year, did they have bad technique? The US has two perennially medaling big boats, more than the Germans, Australians, Dutch, despite those countries having much better funding. I'm not really sure what you're talking about when you say we fail in results. The GB team is the standard in terms of results across the board, no one is arguing that. But if you really believe the US lags behind them because they have shitty technique and don't care about technique, you don't have any clue what you're talking about.