Olympics
Mark Ouma
Having learned from her mistakes at the Atlanta Olympics four years ago, Gabriela Szabo plans to fulfil her dream of becoming an Olympic champion in Sydney next September.
The 1999 World Female Athlete of the Year, Szabo intends to continue her success this year. What has never come to light before is that for the past two years she has had crucial training stints in South Africa before taking the world apart on the track.
Szabo was undefeated in 1999, opening the year on a high by setting a world 5E000m record (14 minutes 47,35 seconds) in Dortmund before going on to win the 5E000m at the world championships in Spain. The slightly built blonde’s greatest achievement was winning the women’s contest at the IAAF Golden League.
In February this year she won the 3E000m at the European Championships in Ghent, Belgium. She has the world’s fastest indoor times in the 2E000m (5:38,76) in Levin, France, and 3E000m (8:35,42) in Birmingham.
Save for a brief period of competition in Europe in February, Szabo has quietly trained on a farm near Potchefstroom since tying the knot with her coach Zsolt Gyongyossy in November.
“This year my mind is focused on the Sydney Olympics, where I want to win the 5E000m. There is a strong possibility I will also run the 1E500m,” says Szabo.
“My training in Potchefstroom has been very important to my preparations before major international competitions. I prefer training in the rural areas where I am free from polluted air, noisy urban life and a lot of media attention,” said the Romanian.
Gyongyossy explains: “While Gabriela relished the attention from the Romanian public, she is unable to train at home. She needs a quiet environment to concentrate on training. We are grateful to the people of Potchefstroom, who have an unwritten code of secrecy not to reveal the whereabouts of the many international athletes who train in the area.
“Besides our physiotherapist, cook and myself, Szabo has no contacts with anyone while in Potchefstroom,” he says. Szabo first came to South Africa in 1998, when she won the gold medal at the World Cup of Athletics in Johannesburg. She liked the climate and decided to spend most northern hemisphere winters training in Potchefstroom.
“This year I think I will do well at the Olympics as the climate here is very similar to that in Sydney. My only problem was that there was a lot of rain early this year and this made training very difficult,” says Szabo.
The Romanian is determined to put behind her the ghost of Atlanta. She arrived in Atlanta as favourite to win the 5E000m, only to fail to qualify for the finals. A few days later she summoned courage to come away with a face-saving silver medal in the 1E500m.
“I shoulder the responsibility for Gabriela’s under-par performance in Atlanta,” says Gyongyossy. “We had never been to America before and we found Atlanta too hot and humid for our comfort. Gabriela did not have enough time to acclimatise before competing. We have learned our lesson and that is why two years ago we decided that Potchefstroom would be an ideal place to get our act together.”
The partnership between Szabo (24) and Gyongyossy (37) goes back to 1988, soon after Gyongyossy graduated from the University of Bucharest. “I qualified as athletics coach and although I could coach athletes in all disciplines of the sport, my interest lay mainly in the middle distances. Under the communist system at the time I was assigned to train athletes in the tiny town of Bistrita where Gabriela lived.
“One day I came to watch a talent- identification race where the youngsters run 600m. Gabriela, who was only 13, caught my eye as an athlete with untapped potential. I invited her to join my training group. Although her mother was apprehensive about her participation in athletics, her father was unequivocally supportive. The rest is history.
“For a long time to come, Eastern Europe and Africa will produce the best athletes in the world. Although we may lack the sophisticated scientific back-up readily available in Western Europe, Canada, Australia and United States, our work rate surpasses by far that of our counterparts from the affluent West.”
Szabo says: “South Africa presents to me a different culture and people. What I find important about this exposure is that it has opened my eyes. I have been improving my spoken English while here.
“I think the handsome prize money and incentives that have been injected into athletics is a huge motivation to train hard. Many of us come from poor backgrounds and if we give our best to the sport we stand a chance of securing a better future for ourselves and our families,” says Szabo, who last year became the first female athlete to make a $1-million in prize money in a single year.