Katherine Williams and Paige Badenhorst jet off today looking to remedy the pain of the split second that cost them a spot at the Paris Olympics in their first qualification attempt eight months ago.
The women’s double scull crew and the men’s four are looking to get two more South African boats into the Games at the late qualifying regatta in Lucerne, Switzerland, in a week’s time.
So far, there are two — the men’s pair of John Smith and Chris Baxter and the women’s single scull.
The men’s four ended 10th overall at the world championships in Belgrade last year, nearly six seconds and three spots short of the French team — but Williams and Badenhorst missed out by one place, a mere 0.58sec that burned itself into their souls. “There’s a lot of emotions that [came] with it,” recalled Badenhorst.
“I remember struggling a lot with the disappointment, I think especially after having some of our best racing. It’s hard to take the wins that you did have when you had this loss of missing out on the qualifying spot.”
Williams recalled facing coaches Tiago Loureiro and AJ Grant on the jetty straight afterwards, as well as all their teammates. “It was quite a hard thing to experience … I was able to watch the race two weeks later, not saying that I got over it that quickly. I think it still definitely hurts us.”
They needed to recalibrate when they returned to training.
“I think it was hard to come back into the season and kind of really reconnect and start everything up again. But I’d say probably from the beginning of the season, the fire was back under our bums and we were ready to go, firing and we kind of knew what we were there to do,” said Williams.
“And I think as soon as the season started, it was ‘how do we take a lot like this and move forward? What have we learnt?’ And that was kind of how we approached it as the new season started.”
The pressure at the qualifying regatta, where only the top two get to the Games, is huge; third place is as good as ending last.
Veteran Smith, a member of the gold-winning lightweight four at London 2012, knows how tough it is, having been at the qualifying regatta three years ago when the men’s four made it to Tokyo.
“The Olympics is probably the most nerve-wracking because that’s it — that’s the one you train for, for four years. But this one’s not far off,” said Smith, who, together with Baxter, has been on a different training cycle to the others.
Williams and Badenhorst and Henry Torr, James Mitchell, Luc Daffarn and Jake Green, another veteran who was part of the men’s four that won late qualification to Rio 2016, have been working to peak in Lucerne.
There’s a vital balance of staying positive while accepting the gravity of the task without getting caught up in the avalanche of potential pressure. “I guess the intensity and the pressure is building, but also our confidence and excitement’s building,” said Badenhorst.
“So that’s how we deal with the training every day — just framing it in the right way for ourselves to prepare for the qualification regatta. Camps can be long blocks of training that are like quite heavy. But the dynamic on the team is really cool. Like it’s very fun. We enjoy spending time with each other.”
Missing out in Switzerland would likely see Williams and Badenhorst switch from teammates to rivals in a fight against Courtney Westley for the women’s single scull seat — but nobody is thinking about that right now.
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