9 years13:38 Aug 12 2008
Times Read: 1,314
I started this entry yesterday and then deleted it. Then Heidi's journal paralleled the theme so well, I knew I did need to write it. See I can imagine, and did for about 12 years what it would be like to stand on that podium. In many ways it was my life.
Only to be broken and discarded.
Watching the women here leave for the Olympics this year was a wondrous thing for me. While there has been "drama and politics" behind the scenes, none of it compares to what I dealt with as a development athlete in the US system.
The support in Canada is outstanding. Yes there is much room for improvement, but over all it is not the "survival of the fittest" it is the honing of talent to get the cream to the top. It's sad really because the US has so much potential in rowing, with the college systems. Yet we loose the top athletes to jobs and careers right after a year or so.
Support for development athletes? There is none, unless you are on the national team already. This is the reason they go get jobs. Who can afford a sport that requires a boat to train in that costs 5,000-12,000 new, and the yearly boat storage fees of $300, don't forget the food bill of $400? Only those that really want it, and are willing to stand for 8 hours a day at a minimum wage job to turn around and train for 4-6 hours after.
This year one of the ones to watch for "gold" in the women's single skulls is in her fourth or fifth Olympic cycle. I'm not certain how many of them she has competed in, but I remember her when I was just out of university winning. Since then she has consistently been at the top of the sport, if not setting more records. 36 years old and a mother, yet that is practically unheard of in the US. There if you are older than 26 you are "too old", as my coach constantly told me.
It was not my age, but my injury that prevented me from going further. I was unwilling to continue on for over a year with a broken body. I was there. Never doubt it, because the woman that was in the quad in 2000 was 4" shorter and in July 11 seconds faster, only to be 7 seconds faster in September. The move was on, all those years of training were paying off.
And then I did something I knew I should not do. I dead lifted without the belt. See the guys on the team had this machismo thing going on. They felt that it was better not to use a belt because it forced you into good form. True.
However, what it does not do is then protect your vertebrae from injury if you have proper form and your muscles fatigue. Isn't that the point of lifting? To completely fatigue.
And that is why the belt is needed.
Being a good weightlifter, I knew this. Yet I was bitten by the competition bug, I let them "convince" me of what I knew to be wrong… To my detriment.
There are no words for the anger. And this year is the first year I can even watch the Olympics without crying. Writing this the tears well, not for the games- it is the memory of what a person will go through, only to be kicked down again. I am your forgotten shame, once broken and discarded.
It will not beat me. That is the Olympic spirit, in its full truth.
I will rise again.
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