Caitlin Rooskrantz crawled across the gym floor. Two back-to-back floor routines at the end of an already gruelling workout had taken their toll.
Seconds earlier she had been flying through the air, dancing, running, somersaulting, leaping and floating her way around the mat, but now she inched her way slowly, almost like a sloth, towards the edge. She looked shattered.
“You’ve joined us on a hard day,” explained Ilse Roets-Pelser, Rooskrantz’s coach for the past 15 years.
They’re into their final stretch of preparation for the Paris Olympics where they are looking to deliver the best performance in the history of South African gymnastics.
“My goal for Paris is definitely to have a clean routine, but I think building on that is to improve my position and score and ranking from Tokyo [Olympics] and ... then to see if I can sneak into the semifinal,” said the 22-year-old, who will be the first gymnast in action in the qualifying round at the Games in four weeks’ time.
“It’s a bit of a long shot but at the same time I’ve said that before and then I’ve surprised myself so I try to keep it big, not, you know, put limits on myself.”
The bronze medallist from the 2022 Commonwealth Games has a habit of performing well at big competitions.
“At the last Olympics she had a personal best, which was a high 49,” recalled the coach. “At last year’s world championship she again had a personal best, which was a 50.
“To make the 24-strong all-round final you probably need like a 51.5, close on a 52. And that’s definitely the goal. She has scored that in local competitions, so it’s realistic, but everything has to go 100% her way on the day.”
No South African has advanced beyond the qualifying stage at an Olympics, with the highest ranking being 46th, achieved by Ryan Patterson at Rio 2016.
Rooskrantz will kick off her competition on the uneven bars, her strongest routine where she uses a difficulty rating of six. American star Simone Biles has used difficulty as high as 6.5.
Gymnasts are free to choose their difficulty ratings, which gets added to their execution score, out of 10.
Making Rooskrantz’s quest even more impressive is that she is in her final year of a BCom (marketing) degree at the University of Johannesburg.
With gymnastics taking about 30 hours a week, including physio and sports massages, she can easily spend 12 hours a day between gymnastics and studies.
She’s finished midyear exams, except for a logistics management supplementary that she needs to write three days before they fly out next month.
“I missed one [exam] when we came back from [a World Cup in Europe in early June]. I’m really regretting that, I wish we came back a day earlier,” she added with a smile.
Coping with the workload has become second nature for her. “I think I have always been ...” Rooskrantz said, struggling to find the words. Roets-Pelser completed the sentence: “... a top performer.”
Rooskrantz, who enjoys spending time with friends and family on days off, is focused on recovery at the moment. “I’m at this point where it is very, very hectic that even those times when I can go home and relax, honestly I’m gonna opt to do nothing.
“I’m really just trying to recover.”
It seems she needs it. “I look like I’m dying, so ja, it’s been very, very, very tough. I will not lie,” she said, adding it actually wasn’t too bad.
“That was one of my better floor days that you’ve seen. They get rough.”
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