Olympic visitor: (From left) Diesel Boswell, Ria Thompson and Dusty Keeble.
Photo by
Rodney Braithwaite
One key message remained at Congupna Primary School when Olympic bronze medal winner Ria Thompson shared stories of her experience at the Tokyo Olympics recently: “never give up”.
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Ms Thompson and her crew — Caitlin Cronin, Harriet Hudson and Rowena Meredith — rowed to a ‘fairytale’ medal in the women’s quadruple scull.
In fact, the manner in which her team reached the finals was a bit of a fairytale itself.
Ms Thompson’s crew was a late inclusion, and had to go to the final Olympic qualification regatta in Lucerne, Switzerland, in May 2020.
It shaped up as her crew’s last chance — the “regatta of death” — where Ms Thompson told the students “it was make or break”.
Ms Thompson and her crew qualified for Tokyo after winning and were expected to finish 11th of the 12 entrants — and that’s where her message began to resonate.
“That’s how we were ranked when we got there, except we didn’t listen to that. We just wanted to do our best and never give up, fight all the way to the line,” she said.
The final race at Sea Forest Waterway in Japan had Thompson’s crew up against Italy, the Netherlands, China, Germany and Poland — stiff competition.
As the race got under way, China quickly pulled ahead and Australia was lagging behind.
As the dogged Australian crew approached the finish line, Ms Thompson noticed other teams starting to make mistakes after seven-and-half minutes of pushing past their limits — and again, “never give up” rang true.
“The pressure was building, it was the Olympic Games,” Ms Thompson said.
“Out of the corner of my eye I saw the German crew, they were caught in a crab.”
Catching a crab — rowing lingo for a poor stroke — had the Germans break their well-disciplined rhythm and get ‘stuck’ in the water.
And that was Ms Thompson’s cue to step up.
Poland passed the Germans first but the Australians lingered just one second behind, and yet again were not prepared to give in.
“We were so close to the end. I was so tired, my legs were burning, my lungs were burning, I couldn’t breathe, so all I could yell at them was ‘go go go!’, and we just rowed as hard as we could across the finish line,” Ms Thompson said.
Her burning legs and heaving lungs were all but forgotten once she looked to the screen.
Gold for China appeared, silver for Poland — and then bronze for Australia.
From 11th seeds to third place: Ria Thompson and her crew beat all the odds at Tokyo.
Photo by
Rodney Braithwaite
“When we crossed that finish line, I couldn’t believe we just won a medal. We were meant to be 11 out of the 12 boats; we just came third in the whole world,” Ms Thompson said.
In that moment Ms Thompson felt elation, excitement and relief — and as she relayed to the Congupna Primary School students, all three stemmed from never giving up.
“If we got to the halfway point and we thought ‘we’re not going to get a medal, it doesn’t matter’ and we just stopped trying our best, we wouldn’t have been in that position to get the medal when (Germany) made the mistake,” she said.
“It was really important that we fought every single stroke to get to the line, and that’s how I ended up with the bronze medal.”
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