Don’t expect Jenny Casson and Jill Moffatt to be the picture of serenity as they sit in their oars waiting for the races to start at the Paris Olympics.
Since they finished 12e In the women’s lightweight double sculls at the Tokyo Games, both women changed coaches and tapped into something unique: the emotions that fuel their competitive spirit.
Those emotions can be raw and haven’t always been accepted, especially in women’s sports, their coach Jeremy Ivey said.
“When they sit on the starting line, they are like wild animals, ready to slit someone’s throat,” he said.
“I think a lot of times people have said, ‘If you’re worried, if you’re nervous, this is not the place to be.’ Well, you know what? You’re at the Olympics, you’re at the world championships,” Ivey added. “You’re on the biggest stage. You’re going to have a lot of adrenaline, you’re going to want to go out there, so (we’re) running towards those feelings and turning them into weapons.”
The change has been accompanied by very good results.
Casson, of Kingston, Ont., and Moffatt, of Bethany, Ont., punched their ticket to Paris with a fourth-place finish at the 2023 World Rowing Championships in Belgrade, Serbia. They then finished fourth at World Cup 2 in Lucerne, Switzerland, last May.
“They’re older, they’re stronger, they’re in better shape than they were in Tokyo. And they have more confidence in what they can do on the field,” Ivey said during a video call from Italy, where the rowing team has been training before heading to France for the Games.
Canada sent 10 boats to Tokyo and came home with two medals after winning gold in the women’s eight and bronze in the women’s pairs.
Four of the eight rowers on the women’s team are looking to defend their title in Paris: Kasia Gruchalla-Wesierski, Kristen Kit, Sydney Payne and Avalon Wasteneys.
The memory of the gold medal is still fresh in the mind of Montrealer Gruchalla-Wesierski.
“It was so weird, because I felt like I had been there before,” she recalled of the race. “I visualized it over and over again, until I would taste it in my mouth, like the taste of blood after a hard effort. Everything, the smell, everything. I felt like I had been there before.”
“So I couldn’t really believe it was happening. So I had to look at the big screen to make sure that we had, in fact, just won the Olympics,” she continued. “And then when I saw people virtually cheering for Canada, I was like, ‘Oh my God, we just did it.’ And I just started laughing and crying at the same time.”
Also in the women’s eight boat will be Victoria’s Caileigh Filmer, who won bronze for Canada in the pairs at the pandemic-delayed 2021 Games. She will be joined by Kristina Walker and Jessica Sevick — who rowed in Tokyo but didn’t finish on the podium — as well as Abby Dent and Maya Meschkuleit.
Despite its success at the last Summer Olympics, Canada will only have two boats in Paris.
The last three years have been difficult for the nation’s rowing program, Ivey said.
“We certainly have a good pool of strong, talented athletes, but we started with a completely new coaching staff. Strong coaches, but who are also developing their own experience,” he explained.
After Tokyo, athletes and coaches had three years to prepare for the next Olympics instead of the usual four years, and it was tough, Ivey added.
“We kind of had to get to work. And I almost felt like we were a year behind in developing some of these teams,” he said.
A number of teams that missed out on qualifying for Paris have already won prestigious competitions, Ivey noted, which bodes well for the upcoming Olympic cycle.
“You can see that the talent and the potential is there. We just didn’t get there to qualify for Paris,” he said. “But I hope a lot of these athletes and coaches will continue and go to Los Angeles in 2028.”
Trying to win gold again was not easy.
Rowing can be a difficult discipline to get into, partly because of funding, Kit said.
“These women and men train like hockey players, they are just as fit and strong. But we are not funded like hockey players,” said the coxswain of the gold medal-winning team.
“We’re below the poverty line. For a lot of people, we get $1,800 a month (in financing) and rent is $1,400. So how do you eat the best food? How do you get the best mental coaches? How do you be happy when you’re worried about paying the bill and you still have six workouts left for the week?
“Elite athletes, we all face different mental barriers around consistency, motivation and that kind of thing. But rowers have that added layer of financial stress and having to make the right decision. So I think it’s pretty interesting.”