2000
Grant Shimmin OLYMPICS
This time four years ago, Ruth Nortje had just come to the end of a chapter in her life that must have contained its fair share of sleepless nights. The 29-year- old sprint canoeist had just qualified for the Atlanta Olympics at the last opportunity, in Seville.
She had exuded confidence, but that’s in her nature, and you can’t very well uproot and head for the United States, where the level of competition is so much higher, and then not talk up your chances. By the time she made the cut for Atlanta, though – South Africa’s only canoeist to do so – the games were just three months away, and despite being written up at home as an outside medal chance, Nortje fell well short of that mark.
This year has been completely different. This time, she got the small matter of her Olympic qualification out of the way well in advance, at last August’s world championships in Milan. “I’ve been in a fortunate situation where I could focus my entire year on Sydney,” Nortje said this week from the Hungarian capital of Budapest, shortly after arriving en route to the World Cup regatta in Szeged this weekend.
“Form-wise, I’m in very good shape. I’m still in a bit of a pre- season training programme.” That’s a major difference from 1996. Nortje, now 33, has had time to establish a formidable fitness and strength base, without having to be continually worried about her speed, which would have been her primary concern four years ago as she strove to qualify.
Despite that, she managed bronze medals in the 200m, 500m and 1E000m events in the recent World Cup meeting in Mechelen, Belgium, the same events she will contest this weekend.
“Whatever I do here is a good indication but not the indication of where I’m going to be at the Olympics. I’m going to race in Germany next month, but I’ll be doing a lot more intensive sprint work before that,” she said. So a significant improvement in her times can be expected. “I’ve been working very hard on the first half of my race, because the second half has always been my strong point. I should have the two halves working together by the Olympics.”
Nortje’s qualification was not without hiccups. Finding herself in a semifinal containing three medallists from the past two world championships in Milan, she missed out on the nine-boat final. “I could have let being in the B final defeat me, but instead I finished 2,5 seconds in front of the field and recorded the fifth-best time overall,” she said. “I think having been in the B final keeps me humble and keeps me hungry. I’ve got a lot of motivation to prove myself now.”
Nortje’s other role in Szeged and in the build-up to the World Cup regatta in Duisburg, Germany, next month, will be to encourage two male compatriots who find themselves in a similar situation to the one she was in four years ago. For Alan van Coller and Andrew Blackburn, however, there’s an intriguing rider to the situation. While Nortje was competing against foreign opposition in her qualification quest in Seville, Van Coller and Blackburn are up against each other in a duel for one Sydney spot.
Van Coller actually qualified the boat last year in the 500m K1 event, but like rowing, the principle followed is that a boat is qualified and then the occupant is sorted out from a series of eliminations. In Nortje’s case, there was simply no competition in South Africa, but Van Coller and Blackburn are the remaining two of four paddlers who set out in search of that sole spot, Scott Rutherford and Hank MacGregor having fallen out in the first round of eliminations in South Africa.
Szeged and Duisburg are the nominated events for the final battle.
“It’s difficult to know how things are going to go,” said Van Coller. “I haven’t raced against him since the race to decide the two boats to come here. My form’s fairly promising. All I can do is go out and do my best.”
Van Coller clocked the best time by a South African in the 500m event at Mechelen: one minute, 39,6 seconds, finishing fifth from a field of 45. “That’s definitely my best performance. I hope to do something like that again,” he said. “Naturally it’s a tense situation, but the best man must win and go. Those are the rules and you’ve got to live by them.”
Blackburn recently won two gold medals in Linz, Austria, where the field was inferior to Mechelen and the times slower than Van Coller’s, but with a headwind. Which means one thing: it’s really too close to call. May the best man win.
ENDS