Aiming to overcome Beijing disappointment
Brianne Theisen-Eaton was favoured to win gold but had to settle for silver
EDMONTON— With a shuffle step and a resounding “oomph,” Brianne Theisen-Eaton heaves the four-kilogram metal ball with all her might in the shot put.
She’s also one of Canada’s best 100metre hurdlers and one of the nation’s best long jumpers, yet here she is at July’s national championship, struggling in the shot put circle. Theisen-Eaton is strong but she’s also a tall, slender heptathlete, and this is not the best of her seven run, jump and throw events.
The shot lands not far off the 14metre mark, which is good for her. As she walks over to coach Harry Marra, she does the final arm movement a couple times in the air as if to cement something in her mind.
She’s already qualified for the Rio Olympics; she’s only here to prove she is fit. It would be easier to compete in an event or two she’s really good at, but the multi-eventer’s path is rarely the easy one.
“It’s about what is going to set me up the best for Rio,” she explains.
What will help her win a gold medal in Rio? She’s had a lot of time to think about that and one particularly heartbreaking meet where she learned the biggest lesson of all.
It was at the 2015 world championships in Beijing where she could have won, probably should have won, but didn’t.
Theisen-Eaton is 27 years old and has been a heptathlete full-time for nine years. She’s never been the strongest or the fastest competitor; her strength comes from her determination and consistency across all the events. She may not win an individual one, but she doesn’t lose any badly either and that, when the points are tallied, generally puts her ahead of heptathletes who rocket up and down through the seven events over two days.
She forgot all that when she stepped into the Bird’s Nest for the championships last summer.
She was the favourite to win. London Olympic champion Jessica Ennis-Hill was just returning to competition after taking time off to have her son, Reggie. Instead of winning, Theisen-Eaton freaked herself out and ultimately came second to Ennis-Hill.
“I felt like I had to (earn a personal best) in every single event or I wasn’t going to win,” she says.
“Had I just gone out and tried to do the best I could do I probably would have won but I didn’t know how to do that. That’s something that is learned and I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on it now.”
The Briton’s winning score of 6,669 particularly hurt since Theisen-Eaton had posted a better score, 6,808, just three months earlier at the Hypo meeting in Gotzis.
Most athletes can accept being beaten so long as they know they delivered their best. It’s much harder when they know that’s not the case.
“It still eats me alive,” she said in an interview last November, about that silver medal. “I look at the medal and I think, ‘This is a failure.’ ”
She remembers feeling that way but, like the best athletes, she’s turned failure into a lesson for the future.
“I’m not bitter about that medal at all anymore, not at all,” she says.
“I’m happy that that’s happened because I do believe had I won the gold I would be the same mental person that I was in Beijing last year, I wouldn’t have learned that lesson.”
So now that silver medal sits along with the rest of the family medals.
“We have them sitting in a box because one day, hopefully, we have someplace to display them,” she says.
It’s a big box, between her and her husband Ashton Eaton, the world record holder and Olympic champion in the decathlon for the U.S.
Come Rio, they’re hoping to top it off with two more golds. Ennis-Hill Age: 30 Hometown: Sheffield, England, population: 552,000 Last two world medals: Golds at 2012 Olympics and 2015 world championships Personal bests: 12.54 seconds (100-metre hurdles); 1.95 metres (high jump); 14.67 metres (shot put); 22.83 seconds (200 metres); 6.63 metres (long jump); 48.33 (javelin); 2:07.81 (800). Best heptathlon: 6,955 points, 2012 Olympics in London