Aug 22, 2007
World Rowing Championship regatta
Bronze with no breathing space
Nash completes USA Junior career with medal finish in Beijing
|
Caroline Nash and the Team USA rowing crew found themselves with little breathing space in what was a tight three-way medal battle in the womens-8 boat final at the World Junior Rowing Championship regatta held in Beijing, China on Aug. 11.
Although, as close as the sprint to the finish line was, with Nash and Co. coming in third for the bronze, the short breathing began well before even a single boat was launched.
“Like, when we walked out of the airport, I mean, we all thought it was a joke,” Nash (DHS Class of 2007), 18, said. “We walked out and it felt like we had walked into a sauna. It was nicer in the airport.”
It was, a sauna made of smog.
“We sort of looked around, and we were wondering if — you know, you look to the sky and it is completely gray,” she said. “There is no sun, there are no, clouds... It’s just like this big gray overhang of gray and smog.”
The conditions didn’t stop the show, where Nash’s boat was edged by second place Germany in the late meters, with Romania pulling away for first. But the conditions did indeed catch the competitors’ attention.
“And so we were hoping, that this was not a usual thing,” said Nash, who moves on to Yale to row in Division I following a remarkable junior rowing, national career. “But then every other day was the same humidity — I’ve never been anywhere more humid in my life. Like when I went to Oak Ridge, Tenn. two years ago for the CanaMex (regatta) it was one of the most humid places I had ever been. And China was even worse.”
If the humidity, and smog, made for a dicey mix, the chosen remedy was by this account, no welcome cure.
“Actually for the opening ceremony what they did is shot silver (iodide) into the air, to break up the clouds so that it would rain,” Nash said. “So the day before it was raining like crazy, and of course the day of the ceremony the sky was blue — but half our team was sick.”
Not too sick to compete. But not exactly ready to ‘run a marathon,’ as the saying goes, either.
“Most of us were just a little bit queasy, you know, like coughing,” Nash said. “But one of the guys on our team had really swollen eyes. And he had to take one of the Z-packs (medical kids) in order to race. Because he almost was not able to race because of that.”
You train, and you train, and then...
“We had a team doctor who was treating us and giving him everything he could to get him into racing condition,” Nash said. “It’s sort of scary, because you are out there practicing, and we are out there doing race pieces. Short pieces. And you can’t breath for the whole time. And you start breathing and you can’t get air down, you can’t get air in. And you are freaking out, because you are like, ‘Oh my God, if I have to race in this, what is going to happen?’
“None of us actually knew about that for a little bit. We were just like, ‘Oh, it’s raining, this is annoying.’ And then the next day we were all feeling a little bit under the weather, a little bit queasy when we woke up. We had no idea. We were just like, “Oh, I don’t feel so well, and me neither,’ and then later we found out that they had shot that into the air to make it rain.”
Humidity, they had all experienced. But this, was something else.
“I don’t think it was so much the humidity, because we had been racing in Camden, N.J. which was awful weather,” Nash added. “The first day of practice it was 96 degrees and humid. And we all didn’t think we were going to make it through the practice.
“But it was just the air quality (in China), I think when we got there. Just the smog, and we weren’t used to that. Because we were training up in the Adirondacks — I mean the air is perfect up there.
“I mean, nothing can prepare you for that kind of pollution. It broke up the clouds, and brought the rain down. But because it was in the air and it was what we were breathing in, I think that just didn’t help anyone.”
If the oxygen was thin to begin with, it was in even shorter supply at the finish line.
“We kind of stuck with Romania and tried to not let them take too many seats,” said Nash of the narrow gap with the winners, and Germany who nipped them for second. “For most of the race they were just sitting about four seats up on us.
“And we were up on Germany — we could just about see them. I could see them out of the corner of my eye. You know, when you are pulling so hard, it’s hard to focus on what is going on around you. That’s what the coxswain’s for.”
If the coxswain was drilling the lead boat with her eyes, Romania was always the girls’ focus, from before they had arrived in China.
“She was really focusing on Romania,” Nash said. “We always talked about them during our hard practices in Lake Placid. And talked about, like, how we would be racing Romania. And so, it wasn’t until the last 500 that we were like, ‘Oh my God, Germany, they are right there. We are only like one seat — two seats up on them.”
For a time.
“It came to putting the blades in the water faster than each other,” Nash said. “And I mean, it’s unfortunate that that is the way it ended. But I think on any given day, the three of us could race again and someone different would get first, second and third. Our crews were of that equal caliber.
“There wasn’t very much joy, after the race, to be perfectly honest. Because it was like, ‘Oh my God, did that really just happen...’ It was a very surreal moment, because we hadn’t really accepted the fact that we had actually just gotten walked through by Germany. We were just all sort of in shock I’d say.”
Keeping emotions afloat was much more difficult than running the boat through open water, at a rapid pace.
“Directly after the race I don’t think anyone was really — like, none of us could really talk after the race,” Nash said. “You are just so exhausted, and so in shock, that I think most of us were just sobbing. I personally was just out of breath. I had fallen back and was trying to pull myself together.”
Then another sort of reality set in. The kind that lets you know, you didn’t do so bad after all, coming in third — in the world.
“I think it was once we started putting it in perspective — saying, ‘Okay, okay, we just got a medal at the world championships, let’s not be too disappointed with ourselves,’” Nash said.
Going out bronze, as Nash has now done with her junior rowing career, is still quite a shiny way to go. But in the boat, it wasn’t all about all that glitters.
“So this was my last year of eligibility as a Junior team member,” she said. “And so that was really sad, leaving the girls behind. The girls on the team this year were absolutely fantastic. But I am hoping that the international level racing experience I had at the Junior level, will translate to Division I racing for next year. And give me a little bit of an competitive edge as I go into that. Because it is going to be a whole different world from high school rowing.”
Nash, whose erg score is 7:04 on her 2k which was ranked No. 3 in the country in her age group this season, shall take much with her up to the next level when she joins NCAA defending champ Yale.
“The evening after the big race, was pretty awesome,” Nash said. “I think more than anything I am going to remember the girls on the team. Because when it came to after the trip, it was like I had 14 sisters. Because we were so close. We were just sobbing the last night because we didn’t want to leave each other.”
The womens Junior 8-boat was crewed by:
Alaizah Koorji of Oakland, California, who is rowing for UCLA this fall,
Molly Hamrick, Tampa, Florida, still in High School,
Lauren Shook, Detroit, Michigan, UVA,
Elise Wilson, San Francisco, California, UCLA,
Natalie Eisermann, Key Biscayne, Florida, University of Michigan,
Melissa Ongun, Chicago, Illinois, still in HS,
Felice Mueller, Cleveland, Ohio, still in HS,
Grace Luczak, Ann Arbor, Michigan, University of Michigan, and
Nash.
“I mean, races come and go, you win, you lose,” Nash said. “That’s just part of life. But when you have to leave your friends behind it’s a lot harder.”
One last bout of bonding may have summed up the whole of the girls’ experience competing as one.
“But I do remember being at the dock,” Nash said. “And sort of looking around at my boatmates and sort of thinking, like, ‘Okay girls, hold your heads high, because you worked too hard to let the Romanians or the Germans see us with our faces down. And see us crying.
“We didn’t deserve to be remembered as a crew crying on the docks.”
Not when you have the kind of recovery from an uncharacteristic slow start that these girls did.
“You always have what ifs, what ifs,” Nash said. “But we put together a great race. Our start had not been as strong as our heat. But we had a great middle 1,000 and we actually closed on Romania in our middle 1,000. And it just came down to that last 500.
“And our coach likes to say, in the top three of any race, it’s just a crap shoot as to who wins. I guess it just sort of fuels the fire and keeps you going.”
© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
|
