Games defeat drives rower McCann on to try, try again
ROWER Kirsten McCann still feels the stinging remnants of the painful defeat she suffered at the Rio Olympics in August.
For four years, McCann had worked hard to win a medal at the Brazil showpiece and for the first half of the 2km race, she and partner Ursula Grobler led the lightweight women’s double sculls.
But after the halfway point, the 2015 world championship bronze medallists started to slip behind.
They were second with 500m to go, then they fell to third, then fourth, and finally fifth.
The pain lasted for “a good three, four months”, admitted McCann, who this week returned to the national squad’s base in Pretoria for another four-year cycle, dreaming — once again — of Olympic glory, this time at Tokyo 2020.
“We wanted to be on that podium. I still believe we could have been, but on that day we weren’t good enough [and] that’s hard to come to terms with,” said McCann.
“There’s still obviously that hole, and it’ll never go away. If you see it as a page, the hole’s never going to shrink, but the page will get bigger.
“Now it’s about using that disappointment to fuel you.”
McCann, 28, said her passion for the sport was as strong as ever.
“I really do love rowing and I feel I can be a better athlete.
“I feel I haven’t quite reached the best I can be so I think it’s always a challenge to see how much faster I can be.
“Deep down I believe I can be faster, I can be better. I feel I’ve got more in me mentally and physically,” added McCann, who ended 14th overall at her first Olympics in 2008.
“If you are progressing mentally and physically, why HARD YARDS: Kirsten McCann, left, and Ursula Grobler hard at training at Roodeplaat ahead of the 2015 world championships in France not carry on? There’s still a hunger in me.”
The SA squad features new faces among the familiar ones, but some of the veterans are no longer there, notably James Thompson, a member of the golden lightweight four from London 2012, and Shaun Keeling, who won silver in the men’s pair with Lawrence Brittain in Rio.
Head coach Roger Barrow, known for his no-nonsense approach, said Keeling had undergone elbow surgery after the Games because his tendon had ripped off completely.
“We didn’t know that [at the time]. He always said, ‘look, Rog, it’s really sore’, and I always used to say ‘yes, Shaun, it’s really sore, but so what?’ . . . which I feel quite bad about now. It gives more credit to him and his performance,” he said.
Barrow is looking at giving his crews their first taste of international competition in Europe in April, but the drought means his plans for local training camps are still up in the air.
The water level at Katse Dam in Lesotho, where he goes for altitude work every March, is too low to be viable. The Tzaneen Dam, another regular training site, is also low.
At least Roodeplaat, the squad’s regular haunt, is close to 100%.
Barrow is excited with the new talent coming through, like lightweight men Nick Oberholzer and Vaughn Botes, who have the task of trying to fill the double sculls boat left by Thompson and John Smith, the 2014 world champions.
Smith is moving up to heavyweight.
Oberholzer and Botes ended fourth at the under-23 world championships last year.
“When we got there [to the championships] we were speaking about, will we make an A-final? Will we make a B-final?” said Oberholzer, 20.
“We got through the heat and we came second in our semi and then all of a sudden we were talking about whether we can get silverware.
“Fourth was very disappointing, but I’ve got two years left [in under-23s] and Vaughn’s got one year.”
Sports psychology student Oberholzer, whose family lives in Stellenbosch, Western Cape, specifically chose the University of Pretoria because of the rowing and his dream of getting to Japan in 2020.