Bull eager for redemption
SPLITTING a sporting childhood between the beach and the couch?
It reads like an oxymoron but instead it is the perfect recipe for crafting an Australian Olympian.
Gold Coast-based Olympic kayaker Alyssa Bull, 24, started life on the Sunshine Coast beaches at age six and looked certain to carve out a successful surf lifesaving career until an Olympic desire began to burn.
Every four years when the Games filled television screens and newspapers across the country, Bull and her brother Sam would spend each waking hour camped in front of screens, hoping one day that may be them.
“We went through a stage where we’d watch the Olympics for two weeks straight,” she said. “My brother and I set up mattresses in the lounge room and spent the entire fortnight, day and night, watching every event.
“I didn’t realise surf lifesaving wasn’t in the Olympics but growing up I wanted to be an ironwoman.
“I won a round during my first series so making that decision to step away and be a full-time Olympian was a bit easier because I knew surf was always going to be there.
“I’d ticked off a few of my goals in surf lifesaving but wanting to be an Olympian had been a childhood dream.”
Bull’s pathway to kayaking started as a result of surf lifesaving.
Wanting to improve her ski leg, Bull went from falling out of the boat after each attempt to qualifying for the under-18 Australian team in 2013 and travelling to Canada to race in the K4 for her country.
That same trip was nearly Bull’s undoing – the then 17year-old dislocating her knee cap two nights before the World Canoe Sprint Championships.
“I was playing table tennis with Cat (McArthur) and I took one weird step and fell to the floor and looked down and my kneecap was sideways.
“I was pretty uncomfortable and panicked but we popped it back in and just strapped it heavily for racing,” she said.
Reaching the final of the K4 500 with a severely hampered knee was just a precursor to Bull’s selection in the Australian team for the 2016
Rio Olympics just three years later.
Bull and K2 partner Alyce Wood qualified for the final but went on to finish eighth, a result that remains bittersweet to this day.
“I felt like a deer in the headlights when we first got to Rio,” she said.
“It’s going to be important to go with the flow this time instead of being nervous.”
Bull has qualified for her second Olympic Games but will have to wait an additional 12 months to seek redemption after the 2020 Tokyo event was postponed.
“It’s been a bit of an adjustment to my career progression,” she said.
“I’ve got 12 extra months now to be fitter and stronger and I feel like I’m still coming into my peak.”