David Isaacson
WHAT is a girl to do when she arrives at high school and there’s no rowing club? She starts one. Nicole van Wyk, the first South African woman to win an under-23 world championship medal, has a deep determination that belies her easy smile and friendly disposition.
Inspired by brother Albert, she started rowing in junior school, but the sport wasn’t on offer when she arrived at Assumption Convent in Bedfordview in Grade 8.
She approached the headmaster. “He wasn’t really keen at the beginning [but] I had such a big passion for it.”
With the help of her parents — both played provincial sport, dad Matt rugby and mom Chantal netball — the young Van Wyk brought the principal around and even got Lottery money to buy boats.
“We approached the school that’s down the road, Bishop Bavin [and] we decided we’d merge the two schools.
“They had a rowing club and we piggybacked on them for a while until end of Grade 11, when we broke away and we became our own rowing club.”
Van Wyk went to the University of Cape Town in 2014, but realised, to make it internationally, she needed to be at the University of Pretoria, where the South African squad is based.
She enrolled for a B.Com at Tuks last year and went to the World Student Games in Korea, ending 10th.
“At the end of my race, I said I’d never put in so much effort, so much work, to not do well.
“I really made sure that every session I worked on doing stuff a little bit better. It’s not doing the miles, but making the miles count,” said Van Wyk, 21.
“I managed to improve by 15 seconds from last year.”
That was enough to win lightweight single sculls silver at the recent under-23 world championships, a yearly regatta where several SA men have launched their careers.
Three of South Africa’s golden four at London 2012 boasted under-23 silverware.
So too did five of the eight men at the Rio Olympics. Spread across three crews, the worst result was fourth place; the best was Lawrence Brittain with silver in the men’s pair.
Van Wyk nearly forced her way into the Olympic squad, battling for a spot in the lightweight double sculls boat, but she couldn’t dislodge either Ursula Grobler or Kirsten McCann, the first South African women to win a senior world championship medal last year.
She is relishing renewing her battle against the duo, and hopes that next year she can return to the under-23 regatta and make her debut at the senior world championships.
Among her hobbies is baking, but even that can be competitive. “I think all rowers bake in their spare time. It’s because we sit and watch MasterChef together all the time.
“Last year, we had a massive Come Dine With Me competition among all of us.”
Van Wyk is still smarting at coming second to John “Bean” Smith, one of the gold medallists from London 2012.
“That’s only because the highest score he gave anyone was four out of 10 and he [admitted] that what we cooked was better food than his mom cooked, but he wanted to make sure he won,” she recalled.
Van Wyk is seemingly good at everything she does — apart from rowing at high school, she also played provincial hockey and did athletics and swimming throughout, all while attaining a 78% matric average.
One flaw, perhaps, is her direction on long training rows.
“I’ve beached my boat plenty of times. I’m not very good at knowing where to go. I tend to kind of get in my rhythm and then I forget I’m in the middle of somewhere where I have to turn.”
At Roodeplaat this year, she hit a rock. “I was unstable and collapsed into the water. My coach just looked at me and laughed. There wasn’t much else to do but laugh.”
There will be more smiles on her road to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, but the biggest of all could be on the podium.
I’ve beached my boat plenty of times . . . I’m not very good at knowing where to go