We are now several months past the Olympics and the rhythm of life is almost as if Paris had never happened.
I have had enough time to reflect and feel a whole lot of feelings. I'm not quite sure where to start so here goes the flow.
This journey started when I was 11 years old when I sat in a boat and realized that my motivation for a lot of things in life had to do with the motivation I have for the sport. When I was homeschooled, my parents would motivate me to get work done with practice as the leverage, but I outsmarted them when I started rowing big boats: if they punished me by not allowing me to go to practice, my whole team was affected. Lots of things changed, and we moved to the other side of the world.
There I told my teammates that I would one day go to the Olympics and they laughed answering “ya me too”. In Switzerland, I was put into several kinds of classes and this time it was not Mom, the cool teacher. It was the Swiss grading systems that would allow me to go to practice or not. Now, it wasn't my parents punishing me for bad grades, it was purely the work that I had to get done to pass the year.
My motivation to get better at rowing turned into an escape from my parent's divorce. I was lost and it gave me a new family. It also started to determine my self-worth which was not a positive aspect of that moment.
One thing led into the next and I was in the Swiss team as a junior, and then as a u23, and suddenly I was committing to Stanford back in the country where my love for the sport developed. At the same time, our new coach for the Olympic cycle arrived. Suddenly I was back in the USA starting my freshman year at Stanford. Training for a national championship with Stanford as well as qualifying myself back into the team, was an intense job, to say the least.
Finally came the time to pause my studying and commit 100% of my time to the sport and our team's objective. Thanks to our result the year before, we had qualified four spots for the Olympics but 9 women were competing for these spots. It was a rough winter under the snow, full of side-by-side battles in the single. Several training camps later and selections were finally made for most boats. 3 months out from the Olympics and we still didn't know who was racing the quad. One of our teammates was injured and we did not know when she would be back.
Almost a month out from the Olympics, we got the news that the selection was made. A very intense period of training came up and I struggled to say the least. It's interesting that before this experience I thought that the Olympics would be the highlight of my career and I would be so happy, but in reality, the training is the same, the water is the same and the splits we have to hit are the same. We are only human even if we DID just qualify for the Olympics, and I think this can only be understood by someone who has experienced it. Before these games, Olympians were stars to me, they were superhumans that had overcome every obstacle to become the best in their sport. Suddenly others saw us this way, and deep down I didn't feel any different. I was still, struggling to keep it together due to the intense strain of training and the pressure I put on myself. At one point I wanted to quit, to fly away. Thinking back to that moment, I'm not sure what I was thinking I just remember crying in my car because I felt that I wasn't being a good teammate and that somebody else would do a better job. But i do remember that I knew everything I had ever wanted was at the end of those few weeks of training. I was doing it for 11 year old me.
The pre-Olympic training camp was a highlight. Although we were starting to feel the pressure of the Olympics only 10 days away, we were having good sessions with a tight bond. Each one of us doing our job and intensely more eager to race by the second.
Arrival at the Olympics was interesting. It was the first time I had ever put a boat and oars through an x-ray and there was a lot of media. Training went well and our rooms outside of the village were spectacular.
Racing came around and each race was better than the next. You know it was a good race when you don't remember anything about it because:
a. You pushed your mind so far that it wasn't capable of thinking anymore and
b. Because nothing went wrong to make that race stand out.
We had flow, and we had trust. The final came around and the only thing I remember about the race was the sound of the crowd and the intense sinking feeling in my heart when I realized that we were fighting for a medal and not for 5th and 6th place.
After the race, I knew my face was showing disappointment but we still had a duty to speak to the media. People kept telling us that looking back we would be proud of what we had achieved and that we were going to understand with time.
Time has passed and one thing I have learned is that it was an experience that has changed me for life. Another thing I learned is that I rather someone get to know me for me before they find out I'm an olympian because then they will think I am a superhuman in every aspect of life.
Time indeed made me realize that anything I set my mind to is possible to achieve. And that although the outcome was not the ultimate goal, we got really damn close, and that will fule every one of my strokes going forward. And on that note, it is time to get back to training in sight of LA, but first, my mind is set on an epic season with Stanford.
Tschüssi!
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