Battle ScarredCanadian rower Silken Laumann has fought through pain—in and out of competitionby Michael Farber
The producers had planned to call their made-for-TV drama
Goldengirl, until they discovered a 1979 movie, a bad flick starring Susan Anton,
with the same name. They settled on Golden Will: The Silken Laumann Story. So
what if it sounded silly. It was better than the more realistic My Word, What a
Third! or On Golden Pond: Silken's Glorious Bronze.
Laumann's leg bears a reminder of the rowing accident that nearly finished her career.
photograph by
In truth the only things golden about Canadian rower Silken Laumann at the
Barcelona Games four years ago were her hair and toothy smile. On Aug. 2, 1992,
her countrymen set their alarm clocks for the wee hours of the next morning, and
when they awoke they turned on their TVs to witness a miracle. But miracles don't
finish third, which is where Laumann placed in the single sculls final. Even so,
she had rowed a race that transcended gold, silver, bronze. "The performance,"
says Fred Loek, her former coach, "spoke to people's imaginations."
Seventy-eight days before that Olympic final, during warmups for a regatta in
Essen, Germany, the scull of a coxless German pair's boat cut across Laumann's
path. Its pointed bow ripped into her lower right leg, shredding nerves, shearing
muscles and fracturing the fibula. "Slides from the operating room make it look
like a chisel had gone from the knee inward and a flap of her leg had fallen
down," recalls Marilyn Copland, a close friend who changed Laumann's dressing six
times a day for five weeks after the surgery.
Initial reports said Laumann had no hope of competing in Barcelona. But, in fact,
while being transferred by ambulance to a trauma center a few hours later,
Laumann told fellow Canadian rower John Wallace, who was then her boyfriend and
is now her husband, "I don't want to miss the Olympics." "Most people are willing
to get on board someone else's dreams," Laumann's sister, Daniele, says. Who
dared tell Silken no?
Less than a month after the accident Laumann rolled her wheelchair to her shell
on Elk Lake, near her home in Victoria, B.C., crawled into the boat (in which the
foot stretchers had been adjusted to accommodate her injured leg) and rowed away.
Seven weeks later, having already displayed a will more steely than golden, the
question was, Could she win in Barcelona?
She didn't, of course, but only in the narrowest sense of what constitutes
triumph.
With 250 meters remaining in the single sculls final, Anne Marden of the U.S.,
the 1988 silver medalist, rowed past Laumann into third as she sprinted for the
finish. But as oxygen debt reduced Laumann's thoughts to telegraphic fragments,
she upped her stroke rate per minute from 38 to 40 in the last 100 meters and
beat Marden to the wire. Today Laumann's leg, after seven operations, has a
principal scar running from mid-calf to ankle, from which small tributaries of
cicatrix extend. Marden's scars from having been overtaken by Laumann are not so
readily apparent, but they run deep. "I'll be devastated about that race for the
rest of my life," says Marden.
Happy with the bronze after her stirring finish in
Barcelona, Laumann is chasing the gold again.
photograph by
After her courageous performance—how many other Olympians had needed a cane to
get around?—Laumann held a press conference under a tree. A small grin of
satisfaction settled on her lips. She finally excused herself and, leaning on
Wallace, a member of Canada's gold medal eights crew, limped off into the future.
Or, at the very least, to a nap.
"She made friends with pain," said Anita DeFrantz, an International Olympic
Committee member from the U.S. and a bronze medalist in the women's eights at
the '76 Games. DeFrantz was more accurate than she probably knew.
On a bleak afternoon last December, Laumann was lifting weights at the Keating
Fitness Centre near Victoria. This was a maintenance day, before she headed to
San Diego to begin 16 to 18 weekly workouts under the supervision of Mike
Spracklen, the Canadian men's coach from 1990 to '93.
Rowing is a jealous sport, a nag in its demand for constant attention. Even after
her extraordinary race in Barcelona, Laumann couldn't desert this master. If she
were the type who could walk away, she never would have rowed to a bronze in the
first place. "Rowing kept me honest," she says. "It's so black-and-white. You
can't hide. Before '92 I was a strong person, but I wondered how strong I would
be if something bad happened. Then something bad did happen and I didn't wallow
in sorrow. I just figured, O.K., what do I do now? Sport strips you from all
barriers, from all social conventions, and you see people for who they really
are."
Sometimes you go looking for pain, by working with someone like Spracklen, or
sometimes pain finds you, as it did in Essen. Laumann had already sensed it as a
girl, the second of Hans and Sigitta Laumann's three children. She describes Hans
as old-fashioned, disciplined, willful and gregarious; Sigitta, who on Oct. 17,
1959, had walked across railroad tracks from East Berlin into West Berlin when no
one was looking, is artistic, energetic, fun-loving but moody. They were married
in 1960 and emigrated to Canada a few months later. The marriage turned bitter.
"I always felt my mom was disappointed by life," says Laumann, 32, whose parents
separated when she was a teenager and divorced in 1989. "She had taken some hard
knocks in East Germany, and life never unfolded the way she thought it should in
the West. When my parents broke up, I was forced to gain an independence. At a
young age I felt I was boss of my life, determined to write my own script. But I
learned you can't write your own script, because there are things beyond your
control."
Sometimes life does get in the way. Laumann might have been a star
middle-distance runner, but as a teenager her legs sprouted like beanstalks, and
she grew so quickly that she believed she had no future in track. Daniele, an
accomplished rower, urged her to switch to sculling. Within a year Silken was
competing in the world championships. Within two years she and Daniele won a
bronze in the double sculls at the 1984 Los Angeles Games.
Was this painful? "We were not terribly mature sisters," says Daniele Hart, now a
lawyer for Veterans Affairs in Halifax, Nova Scotia. "I was not as committed to
the competition as I was to the sport. Unlike Silken, it wasn't as necessary for
me to have a gold medal, and that led to problems." Silken fared even worse with
Kay Worthington, who would win gold medals in the coxless fours and eights in
Barcelona. When they rowed the double sculls at the 1988 Seoul Games, Laumann and
Worthington were seventh.
Spracklen changed Laumann's rowing fortunes, after she had traveled from
Mississauga, Ont., to Victoria in February 1990 to meet with him. In the car on
the way back from Laumann's first workout, Spracklen casually said, "She'll medal
in the worlds." Five months later, after sessions under Spracklen that at times
left her too tired to even speak, Laumann finished second at the world
championships, a jump of five places from the previous year. In '91 Laumann won
the worlds to establish herself as the Olympic favorite. Then a German boat
rewrote the script.
Laumann was still in a brace a month before the '92 Games,
but today she is as strong as ever.
photograph by
Spracklen, an Englishman who now coaches the U.S. men's sweep team, is not given
much to sentiment. After she first rowed for him following the accident, Laumann
was crushed when Spracklen's face registered concern with her times and no
delight over the fact that she was even on the water. Indeed, on the morning of
her Olympic final, he was convinced Laumann would win. "I was disappointed when
she didn't," Spracklen says. "Not disappointed for me. For her."
After taking a year off, Laumann felt the same way. The job of being a full-time
inspiration to a nation was swell—she made appearances and gave motivational
talks for IBM and Subaru—but unfinished business remained in rowing. After what
she had endured leading up to Barcelona, life should have been easier. It wasn't.
She was disqualified from the 1994 world championships for two false starts, but
that was only a prelude to her pain.
Laumann failed a drug test at the 1995 Pan American Games in Argentina. Given the
ethos of rowers in general, and Laumann in particular, the notion that she was a
drug cheat seemed absurd. "Here she is in my kitchen, trying to sort out the mess
after the Pan Ams, and she's drinking herbal tea," Copland recalls. "She's so
antidrug, she won't even have caffeine."
Laumann had indeed taken a banned substance, pseudoephedrine, which is in
Benadryl Allergy and Decongestant capsules. The positive test turned out to be
the result of miscommunication, a failure to differentiate between Benadryl
Decongestant and Benadryl Allergy and Decongestant. It was a mix-up that began
when, according to Laumann, Richard Backus, the Canadian rowing team's physician,
was not specific enough in differentiating between the variations of Benadryl
when he suggested what medication might help her sleep on the flight to
Argentina. Another Canadian doctor at the Pan Ams cleared Laumann to take
Benadryl Allergy and Decongestant to treat a cold. The mistakes cost Laumann and
her three teammates in the quad a gold medal and, momentarily at least, their
reputations.
Laumann lashed out at Backus, who had mapped out her rehabilitation program after
the accident in Germany. "I should have been more coolheaded, but he never took
enough responsibility," says Laumann, who was not suspended by FISA, rowing's
international governing body, after failing the test. "He was helpful in my
recovery, but now it's hard to have any confidence in him."
Backus acknowledges there was a misunderstanding, but he also believes Laumann
should take some responsibility. Regardless, in his Victoria office, Backus still
has an autographed picture of Laumann. The inscription: "Thanks for taking some
risks." Backus says it indicates how he believed, when others didn't, that
Laumann could fully recover from the accident if she followed his plan.
Entering the single sculls competition on Lake Lanier in Gainsville, Ga., this
week, with preliminaries beginning today and the final set for Saturday, Laumann
is the favorite to win the gold. "She's rowing the best she ever has," Spracklen
says. "She's making an ever bigger commitment, paying more attention to
technique." The leg is imperfect—her balance is faulty, the ankle swells, she
can't run far—but she has come to accept it, looking at it with quizzical
detachment when she views it at all.
She befriended this pain long ago and moved on. The next time producers call
Laumann golden, it should be cinema verite.
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