Esti Olivier’s journey to the Olympics has taken 16 long years, forged on a resolute dream she has carried from teenager to a 31-year-old with a husband and a dog.
Not even a heart problem could derail the Pretoria paddler from securing her qualification at the national trials in March.
With her ticker not pumping as it should — the result of high stress suffered late last year after her mother and aunt were diagnosed with cancer three days apart — Olivier was put on beta-blockers to keep her heart-rate down.
In the all-important K2 trial in Germiston — the winners would also claim two K1 spots in Paris — she and Tiffany Koch needed to beat the field by a pre-determined margin in the first heat or be forced to race again.
They won, but not by enough. “The second day I just died,” said Olivier, winner of the K1 race which had no bearing on Olympic selection. “I just couldn’t get my body going, it felt like my body was just shutting down.”
They lost the second race, being pushed into a final third decider. With her dream on the line, Olivier decided to quit her medication in the build-up to allow her heart-rate to go up. “We had a really good race, and then about 50 metres before the end, I started blacking out.
“I missed a stroke, and then Tiff missed a stroke, and then I missed another stroke. It was extremely tense, and I wasn’t really sure where I was, and I was just trying to get to the finish line.”
They won, but Olivier blacked out straight afterwards, and both paddlers fell into the water. “Tiff, she pulled me up from out of the water and called the jet ski, and they thought we were embracing [and celebrating], meanwhile I was out,” said Olivier, who one day plans to do a masters in psychology on the phenomenon of choking in sport.
Three weeks after the trials her cardiologist gave her the all-clear, which hopefully marks the end of her final obstacle on a road to the Games that has seen more setbacks than successes.
For the Tokyo Olympics, Olivier qualified at the African Games in Morocco in 2019, but the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) enforced its policy of not accepting continental qualifiers and declined her invitation.
Not long afterwards national federations voted to change Sascoc’s selection standards, but it was too late for Olivier.
Before that she played second fiddle to Bridgitte Hartley, who won South Africa’s only kayaking medal to date, a bronze, at London 2012, although the two became close, training together fairly regularly.
“I actually went on a training camp with Bridgitte in Austria for her pre-Olympics camp and help her and assist her so she’s not alone, and the day she flew to London was the day I flew back.”
Also competing in London was Koch, Olivier’s partner in Paris.
Olivier has paddling in her genes, with father Phillip van Tonder a contender on the old kayaking triathlon circuit.
She committed herself to canoe sprinting in the build-up to Beijing 2008, training with a national squad that featured strong women paddlers, including Hartley, Jennifer Hodson, Michele Eray and Nicola Mocke.
“I wasn’t really in the squad but my brother was, so I kind of just grabbed onto that opportunity to leech onto the squad because my mom had to drive him there anyway, so I might as well go with.”
The coach didn’t mind and Olivier’s Olympic dream took flight.
In Grade 11 she made the decision to focus on kayaking, dropping hockey, where she had reached provincial level. “I cried a lot the day I had to say goodbye to my hockey.”
For Olivier, the sole focus has been the Games. “The dream to get to the Olympics [is] something that I’ve worked for my whole life. I’ve structured my entire life around it — my work, my studies, my social life, my marriage, even. And it’s just always been the goal.”
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