The 1992 Olympics Part I

Scott Shipley, 2002 - My memories of those first Olympic trials are like a slide show in my head. I don't remember a single sound from that race, just vividly clear vignettes of the events as they transpired. I remember putting in far upstream of my competitors. I had spent most of my life training alone and there was comfort in being alone here. The Savage River was coated once again in a low level of fog and its veil energized me. I remember feeling alternately invincibly strong and vulnerably scared.

The strength came from the knowledge that I could have done no more than I had to prepare for this race. The terror came from gate one. Ask anyone who was there about the 1992 Olympic trials and they’ll talk about the first two gates. In twenty years of racing they remain the most difficult beginning to a race I have ever seen. Right from the start there was a tricky six-second lead to the gate one. The paddler had to work his way straight down out of an eddy and along a row of rocks towards medium sized hydraulic just below. Just as the athletes passed through the first gate were required to hook off of the corner of this hole, across its top in a balancing act that rivaled the greatest gymnasts, and wind up surfing the wave on far side into an upstream gate two. As I awaited my start with the the final few paddlers, I sat in plain view of these two had gates but avoided watching my competitors negotiate this tricky combination. There were more than a few paddlers who would wash away years of training in the first six seconds of this competition.

Olympic trials, like no other event, are the coldest most inhumane and most definitively final event in sports today. Many here had missed selection to the National team many times in past few years but were able to shrug it off and continue preparing for this event. Those trials were but a stepping-stone to this final destination, a bump in the road for their Olympic preparations. These Olympic trials were different; failure here meant retirement for many. This was the end of the road for many deserving athletes.

I had always pictured the Olympic trials the way it is portrayed on television-a glorious day filled with the thrill of victory. This was never the case for me. It is a day filled with tears and sadness. It is truly a day of kill or be killed. Making the team seems more like a relief than a victory. Watching your friends and teammates miss that same team is heartbreaking. Partnerships that had shaped my life were split in those few short hours of competition on the Savage River. Rich Weiss and I won our spots on the U.S. Olympic team. After fifteen years of training I had finally become an Olympian. My friend and training partner Brian Brown would not, he had missed that final spot. In more than ten years of trying this was the first time he had ever missed the National Team.

The stress we experienced in the months leading up to these trials had caused many troubles between my teammates. We had one especially outspoken teammate who was constantly railing on the coaches to ensure he had the best support available at the Games. He had railed about everything from adequate housing to an unfair schedule that required us to give up a night’s sleep for the chance to march in the Opening Ceremonies. At one point this teammate had loudly proclaimed, “I’m not going to that parade.” It was a criticism our assistant coach took patiently in stride, one of many difficult moments he would have to bear in the following months.

I remember watching in shock as this same teammate took a fatal penalty on the final day of competition. I was stunned to realize that this great paddler would not be going to the Games with us. I turned a confused eye to this same assistant coach who stood behind me on bridge. Once again he had the patient same look on his face as he again took this news in stride. Under his breath I heard him say to no one in particular “That’s right, you’re not going to the parade!”

Making the Olympic team is both a relief from and a continuation of the same sort of pressure I’d been feeling so much of lately. I was relieved to have made it through that first hurdle but I also had begun to feel the same need to train harder and prepare more for the upcoming Olympics. Rich and I had already laid out our training plans through the Games so both of us hit the ground running. Our immediate plans were to head directly to Spain for a couple of weeks training on the Olympic course itself before doing a single World Cup race in England and then returning home for a solid training cycle on our home waters at Chilliwack.

The race was a bit of a quandary for me. On the one hand it was the only big World Cup Race that year. Everyone who was to compete in the Games was expected to use this their last test race. On the other hand this was the home course of the elite British kayak team. Led by many time World Champion Richard Fox this squad consisted of no less than four separate World or World Championship medallists. Looking at it rationally I knew that you pick your fights and this wasn't the one for me. On the flip side, skipping races is for pansies-necessary arrogance.

My late entry into the race left me once again at the start of the pack. I was one of the first off the line, more than an hour ahead of the British Squad. The course, despite being set on what can barely be described as whitewater, was tricky and hard. Some race runs everything comes together and it feels like you are invincible. You are neither tired, nor rushed; you are infallible. My race run in Nottingham that year was just that. I finished the run, shook off the sudden wave of fatigue I felt after my run and then began an easy warm down. I remember thinking, "Good run; not so fast.” All my great runs felt that way, like the gates weren't coming at me fast enough and like I hadn't paddled hard enough. I spent the rest of the day in feverish worry that someone would best my score.

Nobody did, and I had my first World Cup win. After two full World Cups and a World Championship-eleven agonizing races without a medal-I had earned a berth on the medal's stand. This was vindication at last. I don't know how many times in the last two years I had wondered if I would ever medal in a race. Nottingham was the barometer by which all of us tested our readiness for the Barcelona Games.

You are really an Olympian for such a short time. After our trip to Europe Rich and I returned home to a month’s hard training in Chilliwack. Each day I woke up an Olympian and yet was discouraged to find my day was very much the same as any other. I wanted to scream out to any and everyone that I was going to the Olympics but there was no one there to shout it to. The Canadians were off training abroad and Rich and I were left home to train by ourselves.

The Games truly begin when you climb off the plane at team processing. It was like crossing through the gateway to another world. Several of us flew down to Miami on the same flight from D.C. for team processing. This is an intense two days of being briefed on and dressed up as Olympic athletes. Not long before I had been living in a tree house and wearing the same wardrobe I had worn in high school. Here we were put up in the Hilton and given three full suitcases of new clothes and equipment.

The whole of team process is a bizarre orgy of giving that is some sort of exponential expansion of a two-hour shopping spree being multiplied by all of your Christmases put together. You fly in one night and are met at the airport. Somebody takes care of your luggage and somebody gets your boats so that you can be expressed back to the hotel for a fine steak dinner. After a good night's sleep in a queen size bed you are softly awakened for a buffet breakfast. The Hilton has a large supply of fresh linens in case you’d like to bathe first. After sharing breakfast with everyone from speed walkers to gold medal swimmers you are ushered into a large room and given a gigantic shopping cart. Let the orgy begin.

The room is like a warehouse filled with shelves and tables around its perimeter. You go to each of these tables and simply offer them the size of clothes you wear. They check your name off the list and fill your cart with treasure. Ten or twelve shirts, three pairs of shoes , new camera, new alarm clock, and three pairs of pants to go with your four pairs of shorts. Any and everything fills your cart. Somewhere along the way you adopt a Cabbage Patch doll, get a massage, have your teeth checked for lurking cavities, and after cough twice to check for hernias.

This was the sort of booty pirates had written shanties about and we whipped ourselves into a feverish feeding frenzy. I ran from table to table getting anything they had to offer; free shaving cream that I wouldn't need for years to come, cologne that I wouldn’t wear even if I were anonymous, tampons and hairdryers. We were sharks who smelled blood and didn't care if we were getting fine tuna or some putrid tourist wrapped in neoprene. At one point a gargantuan decathlete pointed at the shorts my coach was wearing and demanded to know where they came from, "I didn't get any of those!" he demanded. “I brought them", my coach replied as he continued to dress.

Our flight to Spain was even more crazy. It was like an airborne dinner party. It was an entire Boeing 767 filled with Olympic athletes. The plane had no more than taken off before we were all wandering the aisles to meet people. This was the greatest collection of American athletes of the entire quadrenium and we wandered from seat to seat as we got to know them. Movies played non-stop on the video screens and we could request a meal anytime we liked. By the time of our arrival we had become such a rowdy bunch that the request to take our seats resulted in a mammoth pillow fight that didn't end until we pulled up to our gate on the ground.

Next: 'The 1992 Olympics Part II'