Grant Shimmin OLYMPICS
I’m not too sure where or how the phrase “nothing ventured, nothing gained” originated, but if I met someone now who’d somehow never heard that well-worn saying before, I could probably go some way to convincing him that it was coined for Colleen Orsmond and Helen Fleming.
It could well have been their motto as they set out to qualify their coxless pair oar for the rowing programme at this year’s Sydney Olympics via the “back door”. Nothing ventured, nothing gained implies no guarantee of success when a venture is undertaken, and when Orsmond and Fleming embarked on theirs, success was nothing more than a distant dream. They set out knowing they would have to beat down a selection door that appeared to be well and truly locked.
The story so far: in 1996, just four years after taking up the sport, the pair, then both aged 22, qualified for the Atlanta Olympics, where they finished 11th. “I think that was a pretty fair reflection of where we were at the time,” says Orsmond.
“We were quite young and relatively inexperienced,” says Fleming. That performance should probably have been the catalyst for a big push towards Sydney, starting right away, but things didn’t work out that way.
“We went our separate ways. I picked up an injury which kept me out of rowing altogether for two years and Colleen moved into a single scull,” explains Fleming. “It was only just before the world championships that we decided to row together again.”
The world championships in question were last August in St Catherine’s, Canada, and were the first qualifying event for Sydney. But while a lightweight men’s coxless four and a heavyweight men’s pair oar were qualified for South Africa, Orsmond and Fleming missed out by the narrowest of margins.
Despite having a “really good semi, our best performance internationally”, they missed out on the A final. They actually had the fourth-fastest time overall from the two semi-finals, but also finished fourth in their race, with only the first three from each getting through.
“We needed to come first or second in the B final, but unfortunately we messed up a bit and only finished third,” recalls Orsmond.
“It was the first day that there were rough conditions and I think we were a bit thrown. We messed up the first 500m and couldn’t recover,” says Fleming.
In the end, they’d missed out on qualification by a tantalising 0,4 seconds.
That, to all intents and purposes, should have been that, but that’s when the kind of character that will make them valuable members of the Sydney team no matter what they achieve on the water began to be revealed.
“We decided pretty soon after the worlds, that ‘We’re up there with them now. We might as well give it our best shot’,” explains Fleming. However, it wasn’t until April 30, the last day of this year’s national championships, that they found out the National Olympic Committee (Nocsa) would allow them the chance to make the Sydney cut through the final qualification regatta in Lucerne on July 10 and 11. “Up until then, Nocsa had been saying ‘no second chances’,” says Orsmond.
In fact, the Nocsa document detailing qualification criteria for various codes, released in May 1998, says simply that “qualification will be at the 1999 World Rowing Championships,” with no reference to the subsequent event in Lucerne.
Which means, in effect, that the pair embarked on their attempt to qualify without even knowing if they’d have the opportunity. The turnaround probably had something to do with the fact that, after a few months of solid training together, they were clearly moving their boat faster than they had in Atlanta or at major regattas since.
In March South African Rowing Union president Richard Wilkinson explained that whether Orsmond and Fleming would be given a second chance would depend on their progress at home and in the major European regattas leading up to Lucerne, and the decision rested with Nocsa. Orsmond admits they expected to set out for Europe not knowing if they’d have another chance.
Despite that, the pair were prepared from the start to make sacrifices to aid their quest. Both are now out of permanent employment. Fleming, who spent three years working for a sports goods firm after Atlanta, explains: “In January, I decided it was becoming too difficult to focus on training and my job, so I decided just to focus on one.” The job went.
Orsmond coached at a school from September to March, but otherwise it’s been full-time rowing, seven 90-minute sessions a week on Roodeplaat Dam, clocking up around 18km each time, and plenty of time in the gym.
For Fleming, the quest for qualification has also meant time away from her fiance, Simon, who is based in Munich, and will become her husband in November. “We hadn’t actually set a date, but we were looking to get married sooner than that,” she says.
Last Sunday Orsmond and Fleming jetted out for, conveniently, Munich, the first of three European stops – Vienna and Amsterdam are the others – which will see them building up to those fateful two days in Lucerne.
“We have to come first or second. There’ll only be 10 women’s pairs in Sydney and eight qualified at the world championships,” explains Fleming.
So what if the worst-case scenario unfolds and they don’t make it? “Before we gave up everything, I thought about that, but it didn’t put me off,” says Fleming. “The alternative, not to try because of the possibility of not making it, just didn’t bear thinking about,” says Orsmond.
Surely that’s the kind of attitude that breeds success. Let’s hope the whole team that sets out for Sydney buys into it.