Hometown Heroes is a new series profiling members of Canada's National Rowing Team. From now until the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, the athletes from Canada's two National Rowing Training Centers will be battling for spots on the Canadian Team. Each athlete's story is unique. Each athlete's story will be told.
(RCA caught up with Lauren in August, a couple of days before the start of the World Rowing Championships, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.)
The Journey (Not The Destination)
Lauren Wilkinson is on a treasure hunt. Her quest? Gold: preferably Brazilian, circular in form, and attached to a neck ribbon.
Sound daunting? Perhaps. Hence why Lauren prefers to focus on her journey instead of her preferred destination, the top step of the podium. And just like Santiago, the protagonist in THE ALCHEMIST (her favorite book), Lauren draws inspiration from the process, when visions of her endpoint start to feel clouded and convoluted.
And though, as with Santiago, her voyage has taken her far from home, the mentors the London Olympian has met along the way, along with her experiences, have taught her many important lessons. Lessons that have helped guide her decisions, and give her confidence in the intense world of competitive sport.
The West Coast is where Lauren's campaign began. Growing up in North Vancouver, she was introduced to the sport of rowing at the spectacularly located Burnaby Lake Rowing Club. Framed by the North Shore Mountains, the serene setting was the perfect location to be introduced to the opportunities that the sport had to offer.
Excited by the prospect of getting into a rowing shell, at the age of eleven and with her older brother by her side, Lauren had her first rowing lesson.
A self-professed "annoying little sister", Lauren was forever playing catch up with her two older brothers.
"Whatever they did, I had to do," she said, as she reminisced about her childhood. "I was always in their way, but I looked up to them. They were my heroes."
Lauren followed them to whatever athletic practice they were endeavoring at the time, but not before first attempting to go it alone in a tutu.
"We were pretending to be horses and we were supposed to prance around effortlessly and delicately," she explained of her brief foray into the world of ballet, "but I galloped instead. I was definitely a galloper."
So leaving the ballet flats to the little ponies, Lauren galloped straight out of the dance studio and into the hockey arenas and rowing basins alongside her brothers.
Feeling more in her element within these new settings, she was able to excel with a quiet intensity that only a third child, playing catch up to two stronger and older siblings, can do.
However by the time Lauren was sixteen, she had to make a decision.
She realized that every choice that an individual makes has long and lasting consequences. Because of this, the budding athlete chose wisely. Her decision to choose rowing over the other sports she was involved with led her south of the border to Princeton University, an Ivy League degree, and exposure to the competitive American college rowing circuit.
And so when Lauren burst onto the senior Canadian scene in 2011, a year before the 2012 London Games, she appeared to be a relative newcomer to the tight knit group of athletes training at the National Training Centre in London, Ontario.
In reality, she had spent the last decade rowing at the club level, the US college level, as well as on numerous Canadian Junior and under-23 World Championship teams.
"The dynamic was somewhat challenging," Lauren explained in reference to her joining the senior team at such a late date in the lead up to London 2012.
Challenging maybe, but certainly not insurmountable.
"I'll always remember what my first coach in Burnaby told me," Lauren explained in a melancholy tone, in reference to Dick McClure, who has influenced other notable athletes including Olympic gold medalist Kathleen Heddle.
"He told me 'fast people want to row with fast people, so have confidence in yourself'," and then, after pausing to collect her thoughts, added in her own words,
"If you are fast, you belong there, and people will want you there. It's that simple."
Sage advice, and words she keeps repeating to herself in a world where a single poor performance can wreck havoc on a rower's confidence.
And even though an alchemist could transform Lauren's London Games silver medal into the elusive gold that she seeks, she prefers to continue her quest, as her personal journey continues.
"The process is extremely important. It's actually all about the process." Lauren continues, before quickly adding,
"But I really want that gold medal in Rio," and then, while almost lost in a trance, she quietly whispers, "nothing but the gold will do."
There is a line in THE ALCHEMIST that states if you really want something, the whole universe conspires in helping you achieve it.
The universe helped Santiago find his gold. Only time will tell if she conspires to help Lauren find hers.
(At the end of August, Lauren and the women's eight crew finished second, to the Americans, at the World Rowing Championships in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Lauren will be competing at the National Rowing Championships in Victoria, BC on November 7th-9th.)