Dave Feschuk
A darkhorse rows it alone for Canada,
When she’s not competing among the world’s best rowers, Carling Zeeman likes to race horses.
At a strong six-foot-two, Zeeman is nobody’s picture of a pint-sized thoroughbred jockey. But growing up on the family hobby farm near Cambridge, Ont., where cows and goats and the occasional peacock roamed the fields, she fell in love with life in the saddle. So it’s a tradition of sorts, around holidays when she and her two brothers are back at home, for family and friends to each pick and horse and line up at a makeshift start line.
“And then we just let ’em rip,” Zeeman, 25, was saying in a recent interview.
“Our horses just love to race. When they know they’re racing, there is very, very little that can hold them back. They’ll run themselves into the ground before they stop. I think that’s something that I can learn from when I’m racing. When I’m out on the water, I just try to get that feeling and channel that spirit.”
She’ll be channelling it in her Olympic debut beginning Saturday, when the five-ringed regatta begins on the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon in the midst of this sun-soaked city.
Zeeman will be the first Canadian woman in 16 years to compete in the single sculls, an event that, a generation ago, was a national mainstay. Silken Laumann won the Lou Marsh Trophy as Canada’s athlete of the year in 1991, the year she claimed the women’s world championship in the single in the lead-up to a Barcelona Olympics in which she claimed a heroic bronze after recovering from a devastating leg injury. Derek Porter won the men’s world title in the single in 1993 and Olympic silver in 1996. And Marnie McBean, who like Porter had been a stalwart in sweep rowing — wherein each rower uses one oar apiece as opposed to the two used by scullers — made a savant-like adjustment and won world championship silver in the single in 1993.
Since those days, the prospects for similar success have been few and far between.
“They don’t come along all that often,” said Peter Cookson, Rowing Canada’s high-performance director.
“We’ve had Silken and we’ve had
“When a horse is running, I think it’s just instinct that takes over . . . I need to let that take over.” CARLING ZEEMAN CANADIAN ROWER
Derek Porter and we’ve had Marnie in the single. But we haven’t had many. It takes a unique individual who’s really willing to push the envelope every single day and not have a team around to help that. That’s what Carling brings to the table.”
Said McBean: “Being a single sculler means you’re the kind of person who likes going to a movie alone. In a crew, you want someone else who’ll go to the movie with you so you can go, ‘This sucks.’ Or, ‘That’s funny.’ Or, ‘Did you understand that.’ But if you can sit there and laugh and cry and just fully enjoy it by yourself, then you know you probably have the inner space to be a single sculler.”
Zeeman, 25, was an accomplished speed skater as a kid, and a volleyball player who garnered NCAA scholarship offers as a high schooler. And in the seven years since she took up rowing, she has quickly established herself as a world-class competitor.
“Carling probably has once-in-ageneration physiology,” said Natalie Mastracci, a member of Canada’s women’s eight that will attempt to defend its 2012 silver medal here in Rio. “She’s stronger (than the typical elite rower). She has a greater aerobic capacity. I feel so empowered by Carling, and so excited for her. Every time she lifts a little bit more in the weight room, I think that encourages us all to be better.”
Asked where she sits in the hierarchy of the world’s best single scullers — the women she’ll compete against beginning Saturday — and Zeeman figures she’s “in the top 10.”
And while some observers figure her best shot at a medal won’t come until 2020 in Tokyo, should she continue the Olympic quest beyond these Games, there are those who consider her a dark horse here, too. She did, after all, win a World Cup race earlier this summer.
“We believe she can be a contender,” said Cookson. “There’s six or seven good athletes that she can be in contention with.”
Before departing for her first Olympics, Zeeman spent last weekend back at home partaking in a different kind of race. She found herself on horseback, in part, she said, to take her mind off the biggest competition of her life.
“If I think too much about rowing, it kind of sucks out the fun,” she said.
But she got on her horse, too, to remind herself of the spirit that’ll be necessary when she takes to the water among the world’s best.
“When a horse is running, I think it’s just instinct that takes over. Some people are just born to be racers. And I think I am,” she said. “So I just need to let that take over and channel that in my rowing stroke.”