| Inspire!
Olympic Hopeful
by Tam Thompson
 A Recent Victory
On the first chilly February morning of 2004, I was hunkered down in my kayak in the icy water of the lower Guadalupe River, below a three-foot waterfall known as Slumber Falls. A volunteer held the stern of my boat and counted down the seconds to my chance to qualify for the Olympic Trials in Whitewater Slalom.
Up until that day, I'd been the Forrest Gump of close calls with Olympic glory. But now, at age 45 and competing in my fourth serious sport, I was determined to make the Olympic Trials for the very first time.
“Three, two, one,” she said, and the starting whistle blew. I charged forward, slicing my paddle down into the water and pulling fiercely. Just imagine a snow-ski slalom course plunked down in the middle of swirling whitewater rapids, with competitors on all sides in kayaks and canoes — that’s a taste of what whitewater slaloming is like.
On my first run down the river I made some beginner blunders. I mistook a downstream gate for an upstream one, missed two other gates, and touched five more. However, I caught on quickly and by the second run I heard Mark Poindexter (one of the two best slalom racers in central Texas) yelling, “Much better, Tam!” as I weaved through every gate, touching only three.
For this race, my only in-the-water competitor was Michelle Clements, the lovely and graceful young wife of Olympic slalom competitor Ben Kvanli. “All right, let’s go for it!” she said as we slapped hands before getting in the water. There were other women paddlers there who might have been able to beat me, but they all decided it was too cold to get in the water.
The qualifying race consisted of two separate timed runs down twisty-turny rapids. I tilted my way across violent water to pivot my kayak and pass through upstream gates, threaded my way through downstream gates, and fought hard to move back upstream and redeem myself by nailing missed gates. By showing up, braving the cold, and paddling hard, I actually qualified for the Olympic Trials, to be held April 2 to 4 in South Bend, Indiana.
 Past Attempts
My first sport was road running. At age 19, I read the original “Aerobics” by Dr. Kenneth Cooper and was inspired to start running. Within a year, I was good enough to qualify for the University of Houston track team as a walk-on, mainly because nobody else wanted to run 10,000 meters.
Being short on speed but long on endurance, I moved up to running marathons. Then I heard that the women’s marathon was going to be added to the Olympics for the first time in 1980, so I vowed to make the team. But President Carter had other plans; the Russians had invaded Afghanistan, so the United States boycotted the Moscow Olympics.
I’d always shined in the track team’s weight room, knowing that if I couldn’t beat my teammates on the track, I could always out-bench them. So I joined a public gym and discovered powerlifting. With a little bit of coaching, I improved quickly. Three years later, in 1985, I was breaking American records and tied a world record in the bench press — 240 pounds in the women’s 148-pound class. Now, if women’s powerlifting had been an Olympic sport, things would have been pretty easy… but unfortunately it still isn’t to this day.
About the same time, Olympic-type weightlifting started to make a comeback and women were getting into it. In fact, there were rumors it would be added to the Olympics, as it was already a men’s event. I knew I had enough raw strength from powerlifting, so I worked on learning technique and developing explosive power.
In 1990, I placed high enough in local competitions to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Festival. I’ll never forget the way my heart danced when the plane ticket to Minneapolis/St. Paul arrived in the mailbox, paid for by the U.S. Olympic Committee. I went, competed, and impressed my Bulgarian immigrant coaches. “You have the heart of a champion!” one of them said.
But women’s weightlifting wasn’t added in 1992, nor in 1996. By 2000, I was 42 years old, had had major shoulder surgery and was hip-deep in an engineering career. Women’s weightlifting debuted in the Olympics without me.
Whitewater Kayaking
In 2001, I discovered whitewater kayaking and fell in love. When I found out that success in whitewater depended on three things I have in abundance — strength, aggressiveness and a love for water — I was ecstatic. It was as if they’d invented a sport for me!
I was on a roll. Actually, the roll came later. In November of 2002, I nearly died on the Medina River in the hill country when I made an error in judgment and ended up out of my boat, going underneath a submerged low-water crossing and coming out the other side. Had there been debris piled under the bridge, as often happens after floods, I would have been trapped there.
The very next night, determined to jump back on the horse that had thrown me, I went to the Austin Paddling Club’s rolling session at the Town Lake YMCA pool and achieved my very first roll (known to nonboaters as “the Eskimo roll,” although there are some 30 or 40 different types of rolls). The roll is a 360-degree rotation about an axis running from the boat’s bow to stern. It’s used as a self-rescue technique when a kayaker flips over, to avoid having to swim out of the boat. I’d been trying for a year to learn to roll, but without success.
After my brain and body snapped to the biomechanics of the roll, I became a rolling fool. Every jaunt on Town Lake, every trip down the San Marcos River, every time and anywhere that I was in my kayak was an excuse to roll. When it was warm outside, I discovered that rolling was an excellent way to cool off, too.
When I began slalom racing, the roll was invaluable. I put my new-found roll to very good use in last year’s Midwest Qualifier. High water forced us to move the 20 or so gates from Slumber Falls to Hueco Falls, a quarter-mile upstream. In the last two years, three people have died at Hueco Falls, either by being pinned against the SUV-sized boulder in the middle of the rapid, or by being thrashed in the whirlpool (called “hole” by seasoned boaters) just below and left of it.
Add to that the fact that the lower Guadalupe was raging downstream at 3,000 cubic feet per second during the race and it’s understandable that for last year’s qualifying race there were no less than six safety boaters waiting on the banks in case a rescue was needed. And they were needed, but not for me. Perhaps it had to do with the prayer I said before the start, or my newfound roll.
Kvanli watched my first run. “I’ve never seen anybody go over Hueco and just instantly flip so quickly,” he said. My husband, Scott Appleton, echoed this, and added, “When you flipped, everyone went, ‘Aw,’ but then you rolled up so quickly that the ‘Aw’s’ changed to ‘Yeah’s!’” I finished both runs that day, and by virtue of being the only local woman willing to go over Hueco at 3,000 cfs in a plastic boat, I won the Women’s Recreational Kayak class of the Texas Whitewater Championships.
Now that I’ve achieved my goal of qualifying, I’m taking my goal up a notch. My new goal is to go to the Olympic Trials and beat someone, anyone, and not be last. Next year, the goal might be to return to the Olympic Festival in my new sport. Fellow athletes understand incremental goal-setting like this. Unfortunately, many nonathletes don’t.
When I explain that I have no real chance to make the Olympic team this year, largely due to having only competed in slalom for a year, nonathletes tend to respond with a knee-jerk slogan such as, “But you should go for it,” or “Go for the gold,” or “Give it your best.” What nonathletes don’t get is that we athletes always give our best, and more. I won’t race if I’m coming off an injury or illness because I know that I’m psychologically incapable of anything less than being out for blood when the race starts. Athletes know that if we set unreasonably high goals, we set ourselves up for failure; fail too many times in a row, and you get discouraged; too much discouragement and you quit the sport.
Yes, northern Indiana will be cold in early April. And yes, the water will be freezing. But I will be there, in my very first Olympic Trials, at age 45. I’ve learned that a lot of success in whitewater slalom comes not just from lots of practice, but also from an attitude of being willing to show up and get into icy water. And you’re never, ever too old!
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