Kate rows out of the shadow for Rio Games

THE woman they call Shadow is thriving in the harsh spotlight of world rowing.

Kate Christowitz, 25, is the new face in the women’s heavyweight pairs boat that will do battle at the Rio Olympics, but she’s an old hand.

“Everyone said ‘oh, you made it overnight’. It’s definitely not that. It’s been a long few years of trying to make this crew,” said Christowitz, adding the key had been changing her attitude towards training.

“Previously I’d train . . . and I wouldn’t be fully invested in it,” said Christowitz, who had “got a bit fat” when she took a year off to complete her honours in sports science in 2014.

“And I forced myself to go to Students [World University Games in Korea] last year in the [single] scull . . . I learned a lot rowing by myself and forcing myself to be hard and learning to race properly.”

At the competition, she took a hard look at herself. “I just looked at the other athletes and I was like, ‘they actually look like athletes and I look like a pie’. [I decided] I’m going to look like an athlete.”

By January, Christowitz had lost 12kg — “it was just from training properly” — and that sparked her monicker within the rowing squad, since she had become “a shadow of her former self”.

“This is the strongest and fittest I have ever been. It’s a cool feeling.”

The South African women’s pairs boat qualified for Rio in September last year, crewed by London 2012 veterans Lee-Ann Persse and Naydene Smith, finishing fifth at the world championships.

At the World Cup event in Switzerland last month, Christowitz and Persse ended fourth, which effectively equates to the seeding they will take to the Olympics.

Christowitz is also known in the national squad as Dobby, after the minion house elf from Harry Potter.

“I’m Lee’s slave,” Christowitz said with a laugh. “The bowman is always the slave of the boat. They fetch the water bottles, they put the blades away, they clean the boat.”

Christowitz used to be a stroke, but switched to bow to make the fours for the 2013 World Student Games in Russia, where they won silver.

“I did that in two months. My old coach actually said to me ‘you row a lot better on bowside than you did on strokeside’, so I guess it worked out for the best.”

Christowitz took up rowing early in high school. “I started because I was pretty kak at all the other sports.

“I came from a small junior school and I was the top performer there and then I went to a big all-girls high school,” said Christowitz, who had played netball and swam.

“I thought I was good, but the school kind of laughed at me and [said] ‘hey, carry on to another sport, please’.”