By Dan Plouffe
She doesn’t yet carry the same type long-term streak of global prominence and dominance as the woman who won it for the past six consecutive years, but the new Ottawa Sports Awards female athlete of the year is definitely off on the right foot.
Ottawa Rowing Club athlete Kate Goodfellow made her first international appearance this past July and came away with a gold medal in the women’s eight from the under-23 world rowing championships – the first time Canada accomplished that feat – as well as a world record time.
“For days, it didn’t seem real,” Goodfellow recalls. “It was like, ‘Did that actually just happen?’”
The feeling was similar when Goodfellow received a phone call and learned that she would be the one to follow retired speed skater Kristina, a four-time Olympic medalist, as the city’s outstanding female athlete for 2011.
“I was surprised,” smiles Goodfellow, who picked up her award at the 59th annual edition of the Ottawa Sports Awards dinner on Wednesday, Jan. 25 at Algonquin College. “To know the calibre of athletes that have received it in the past – obviously with Kristina Groves for so many years – it’s very exciting and a big honour.”
It was a standout season overall for the 22-year-old University of Ottawa student who only took up the sport four years ago when she saw a flyer for the Gee-Gees rowing team.
Goodfellow was a U23 pairs national champion and also a national university pairs silver medalist.
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But the biggest highlight of Goodfellow’s year almost didn’t happen.
Not even a week before the world championships in Amsterdam, Goodfellow suffered a rib injury at a warm-up training camp in Belgium and suddenly the Canadian team had to fly in an alternate in case she wasn’t able to compete.
“It was a nerve-racking few days,” Goodfellow describes. “My goal had been to race there and win a medal, so the thought of maybe not being able to race was devastating.”
The science and psychology student watched from the sidelines until two days before the first race when she decided to get back out on the water and give it a go.
“I said I’ll do whatever it takes to race that race. If they have to lift me out of the boat at the end, then that’s that,” Goodfellow notes. “In the end, it healed pretty nicely and I was able to race without any problems.”
The Canadian team raced well in the preliminary seeding round and was ready to race the final right there and then. Instead, they had to wait two days for the final on a freezing cold, rainy day. Course conditions weren’t too bad, however, since it was sheltered enough not to be too rough and there was a tailwind.
“Before the race, our coaches told us, ‘Go out and set the world record.’ It was, ‘Don’t think about winning – just see how fast you can be,’” Goodfellow recounts. “It took off the pressure in our minds about winning just to see how fast we could go. We all really embraced that.”
Carrying a small advantage over boats from the U.S. and New Zealand, Canada’s coxswain called for a move at the halfway point of the race, and the Canadians surged ahead from there.
“It’s all a blur, I don’t really remember how it happened, but the boat just picked up and went,” recalls Goodfellow, whose team won the two-kilometre race by around three seconds and learned from their coach just moments before they stepped on the podium that they’d also set a world record on top of becoming the first Canadian team to earn a victory in the discipline. “That was just an added bonus.”
Juggling the last semester of her undergrad studies with a part-time job at Scotiabank as well as rowing training, Goodfellow is not part of the group of athletes located at the national team training centre in London, Ont. who can be selected for the London 2012 Games, but that doesn’t mean the next Olympics are out of the question by any stretch.
“Eventually there’ll be more school, but I think for now I’m going to take some time to focus on rowing and being able to train full-time,” explains Goodfellow, who has her sights on the senior national team next and hopefully then the Rio 2016 Games. “I’ll see where I am four years from now. If I’m still enjoying it as much as I do now, then that would definitely be the goal.”
Goodfellow edged out many other strong female athletes from Ottawa for the honour covering 2011, including Ontario Scotties provincial curling champion Rachel Homan, national team starter and Pan Am Games gold medalist Christina Julien and Pan Am silver medal-winning hammer thrower Sultana Frizell.
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