LONDON – Now is no time to talk.

The U.S. women’s eight rowers have been off limits to the media at the Olympic Games.

For good reason.

The defending gold medalists, including Eleanor Logan of Boothbay Harbor, are focused on Sunday’s heats.

Logan, a graduate of Brooks School in North Andover, Mass. (2006) and Stanford University (2011) — is among six in the U.S. boat who return from winning gold at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Since then, as it has every year since Australia won in 2005, the American women’s eight has won the world championships — three straight since Beijing.

Every woman on the U.S. roster has been a world champion, Olympic gold medalist or both.

Listed at 6-foot-2, 175 pounds, Logan, who is in the No. 6 seat, is joined in London by Erin Cafaro (bow), Zsuzsanna Francia (2 seat), Esther Lofgren (3), Taylor Ritzel (4), Meghan Musnicki (5), Caroline Lind (7), Caryn Davies (stroke) and Mary Whipple (cox).

“We go in knowing what’s coming,” Logan said after making the U.S. team. “There’s some new blood on the boat but we all know what we want to do.”

The U.S. will be in the first of two heats Sunday, matched against Germany, Australia and 2011 worlds bronze medalist Great Britain.

The other heat will feature 2010 and 2011 world runner-up, Canada; defending Olympic bronze medalist Romania, and the Beijing silver medalist the Netherlands.

The winner of each heat will advance to Thursday’s final. The others will go to Tuesday’s repechage.

While the American boat is loaded with veteran talent, so is Canada. Seven in the Canadian boat were on last year’s world championships runner-up team.

Great Britain’s third-place team returns six and will no doubt get an extra oomph from the home crowd.

Tom Terhaar, the coach of the U.S. crew, said his team, while favored, is taking nothing for granted. He remembers 2004, when the U.S. eight was favored but finished second to Romania.

“The Olympics are always different than the world championships, always,” he said in a U.S. Rowing press release. “And it’s always closer than you think. I always tell (the crews), it’s going to be tight and it’s going to be close. In 2004, there were six boats dead level at (1,000 meters).”

Logan said a month ago that training for this Olympics began almost immediately after the last Olympics.

“Your training cycle is a four-year cycle,” she said. “You want to make sure your body is peaking for the Olympics.”

Terhaar said there is no way you can focus in on just one team. While Romania has medaled in every Olympics since 1980 — three golds, three silver and two bronze — there are too many good crews.

The U.S. beat Canada by .03 seconds in the World Cup final.

“We’ll do what we can do,” he said. “You never know who is going to show up. There are only a couple of crews that won’t be in the medal hunt, but I would say there are five that are going to be in the hunt for sure.”

The U.S. team has been in London for two weeks, adjusting to the time change and the venue. The rowers didn’t attend the opening ceremonies.

Logan, 24, counts the 2004 national championship in the Brooks School “Blonde Boat” among her most memorable achievements.

Now she could make it two Olympic golds in a row. And surely that would be memorable.