Pursuing the Olympic dream

The controversies and taint surrounding the drug scandals of the Olympics have been an unpleasant distraction from other Olympic stories. The scandals underscore the importance of the game; lives, reputations and medals that are risked for the competitive advantage.

Meanwhile, the real risk of the Olympics is obscured: the kind of lay it all out on the line, one chance, one winner-take-all risk that every Olympian takes.

I spent two years after college following Olympic rowing dreams. I saw up close and very personal, the kind of qualities, emotions and real storylines that make up the Olympic dream. Since then I have been fascinated by what makes an Olympic athlete.

For this year's Olympics I watched two friends and former teammates take their Olympic dreams all the way. After nearly 11 years of post-collegiate rowing, three Olympics and countless World Championships, they both won Olympic medals for the first time: one gold, another silver. The medals were earned after years of dedication. All the more precious, and likewise all the more risky.

Because we don't have a television, I watched the event at a gambling hall where the only available television was next to the Keno machines. Everyone else was watching NASCAR. Somehow it was appropriate watching the Olympics while the woman next to me gambled. After all, the years of sweat, hopes and persistence of Olympic athletes is abonified gamble. There are no guarantees in that arena, and emotions run high because of it.

While I was rowing after my own dreams, I trained with the U.S. Coach and former East German coach. Once he tried to explain to me how I had to use my toes and my neck to eke out extra ounces of power. In the elite arena, tenths of a second can and must be found anywhere and everywhere. Every little bit most definitely counts.

"You have to row with your whole person," he explained, in his German accent.

To this day I'm not sure if it was a translation mistake or if he meant it literally, but he opened up a kind of understanding about sports that I still carry. When you dedicate yourself to a singular goal, especially in elite sports, it is about much more than just physical attributes. That goal becomes a clearinghouse for any and every personal strength you can muster. And some that you must build. It requires more than just physical, it requires the whole person.

On the Olympic level, the Americans' system competes against other systems. It is, in a sense, system against system, athlete against athlete. The Romanians, Russians, Germans and lately the Australian athletes are chosen early on for their athletic prowess and put into a system that secures and channels talent for national pride. Americans are a little more individually driven, pursuing that dream on their own volition with little specific aid from their country until they break into the national arena.

I saw some fantastic success stories in my rowing days. In '96, under the more strict system of the East German coach, you either had his blessing and funding or rather coldly and clearly, you didn't. He liked tall, solid women, picked for physical attributes and he had hand-picked the two athletes that would compete in the pair's race. Meanwhile, two seemingly less physically endowed athletes bucked the system, believed in themselves, took training into their own hands and pursued their dream despite it all.

The talents they possessed were incredible toughness and a propensity for pain. When they showed up at the U.S. Olympic trials, they soundly beat the favored pair, and went on to win the silver medal in the '96 Olympics. It was the only medal the U.S. heavyweight women's rowing team would win that year, earned off a boldness based on confidence and hard work. So much for favored physical attributes.

My few years spent in the world of elite rowing taught me that mental attributes were far more important that physical gifts. Talent is talent, but the deeper traits have a way of lasting and finding what they need.

The Olympics has that way of creating drama.A crucible of sorts, it brings out the best and the worst. That flame that can purify or burn. The athletic investment of years in a dream is often overlooked. The day the games are over, make no mistake that the training has already begun for the next games.

My two friends who finally medalled are an examples of that. Laurel Korholz in the women's eight, and Pete Cipollone, the coxswain of the men's eight. As I scoured the Internet for some sort of coverage of the event, I saw one telling picture.

It was the finish line of the men's eight race. The U.S. team had just won gold and there was Pete, hands straight up in the air, grinning. He had been systematically training, hoping, hunting for that Olympic day for over 12 years, more than 20 if you count his years in high school and college.

It was a picture of absolute, unadulterated triumph.

The world is filled with emotions so rare that they are years in the making. Triumph. How many of you can say you have felt it?

It was my two years of Olympic training that helped me understand the components of that emotion. And while I never achieved the dream, I recognize the emotion and appreciate the risk that was taken for its pursuit: years of training with no guarantee for rewards. It is the basis of every Olympics.

While I may never live to experience such triumph, I am glad to know that it exists in this world.

And always at the Olympics.

Christine Hensleigh is a reporter for the Whitefish Pilot.