row2k Features
Interview
Wisconsin's Gillian Lapadat
February 12, 2013
Erik Dresser, row2k.com

Lapadat at 2012 IRAs

This week row2k chat's with Wisconsin senior lightweight Gillian Lapadat; a former gymnast turned Badger rower. Find out how she got her start in the sport and how rowing and gymnastics are similar and different.

row2k - How did you get your start in rowing and why did you decide to row at Wisconsin?
Gillian Lapadat - Before coming to Madison, I knew basically nothing about the sport of rowing. There is not much rowing in Minnesota, as our state is frozen about 9 months out of the year. My first exposure to the sport was during the 2004 Olympics in Athens when I watched the men’s 8+ win gold from my kitchen TV with my dad. I remember him explaining to me how rowers are some of the most fit athletes, and I almost didn’t believe him because it looked way too easy on screen.

I first heard about rowing at Wisconsin during UW-Madison’s student orientation the summer before moving to Madison. My first day on campus a few months later, I was walking with my parents down the lakeshore path towards my new dorm and as we passed the boathouse I saw a big group of girls being herded into the boat bays. I figured it was an information meeting about trying-out, and my parents thought rowing would be an awesome idea and basically said their good-byes to me as they shoved me into the boathouse.

I ended up not rowing my freshman year for no good reason really, but I decided to try it again my sophomore year. I wanted to be a part of a dedicated team again and to feel challenged every day the same way I had been during gymnastics. I knew how good the Wisconsin lightweight crew was then and I really wanted to be a part of it.

row2k - What was your athletic background prior to college?
Gillian Lapadat - I danced and figure skated as soon as I was old enough to walk, and from 6th grade on I did diving, ballet, ran track, and played soccer. Every weekend I’d go up to my cabin in northern Minnesota and spend a lot of time slalom skiing and wakeboarding in the summer, and snowboarding and cross country skiing in the winter with my 2 older brothers, younger sister, and teammates.

The sport I spent the majority of my energy on however was gymnastics. My mom signed me up for gymnastics at age 6, and up till age 17, gymnastics was my life. Around 6th grade, my coaches saw potential in me and asked if I was interested in training elite, and from about that point on, I was in the gym around 25-30 hrs/week year-round. I saw my coaches more than my parents and loved my teammates as if they were my sisters. I was forced to end my gymnastics career during high school however after I sustained two major elbow injuries. Hearing the doctor tell me gymnastics was no longer an option after waking up from the second surgery was one of the hardest moments of my life. As I look back on all of this today though, it is a lot easier for me to look at it as a good thing for it brought me to UW-Madison (a school I would have probably never considered for it had no gymnastics team) and to one of the fastest crews in that nation. I have met so many amazing people along the way, and I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything.

row2k - How does gymnastics compare to rowing?
Gillian Lapadat - Both sports are extremely mental. Every gymnast goes through whole practices where they completely forget how to do a skill they’ve been able to for years. Similarly with rowing, at the end of a race when your legs are on fire and your fingers feel like they cant hold on to the oar for one more stroke, you can tell yourself to forget to feel the pain and push yourself to go faster. The same sort of mental approach goes for erging, which we do a lot of in Wisconsin.

There are however, a lot of differences between rowing and gymnastics. One thing I always liked about gymnastics was how dangerous it was- you have to be a little crazy and to run full force into stationary objects and flip on high beams. A few of my teammates had parents that could never watch them compete because of they were too afraid of the possibility of any injuries. There is also a lot of novelty involved with gymnastics. There are hundreds of skills to learn on each event, and this variety offers you a little more room to shine as individual within the sport.

Rowing however is definitely more of a team-oriented sport than gymnastics. As a gymnast, of course you train with your teammates for hours every day but at the end of the season your success is ultimately determined by how well you perform as an individual. Nothing can compete with the satisfaction I get from training with the talented, supportive, and hardworking team I have in Madison. At the end of the day this is definitely what I love most about this sport and is one of the main reason why I tried out for the team my sophomore year.

row2k - What do you like most about the sport of rowing?
Gillian Lapadat - Racing. It gives such an incredible feeling that makes all the hard work, erging, conditioning, and sacrifices we do/make over the fall and winter worth it. I also really enjoy just being on the water every day. You can always take a Minnesota girl out of the lake, but you can never take the lake out of the girl. The picturesque sunrises over Madison’s capital definitely make waking up and trekking to the boathouse every morning totally worth it.

It is also a huge privilege to be surrounded by so many supportive and talented people every day- it really makes learning how to row fun. The Porter Boathouse is full of Olympians and ex-national team members eager to share their experiences and knowledge about the sport. It is the greatest opportunity to have so many people to look up to.

row2k - What are your strengths as both a student and an athlete?
Gillian Lapadat - I like to think that I do a good job at not being intimidated by others who may be more talented than me. I’ve learned that in whatever you do, there is always going to be someone more talented than you. I try to transform my limitations, in terms of athletic and academic inexperience, into opportunities rather than misfortunes in order to excel with the task I am pursuing. I like to perceive my inexperience as a clean slate on which to build off of, and to learn everything possible from those more talented than me instead of crumbling under their intimidation. There are a lot of talented people at both the boathouse and in the classroom that I look up to every single day, and they have all greatly influence the person I have become today.

row2k - What has been your most memorable race so far and why?
Gillian Lapadat - My most memorable race was probably Knect Cup in 2011, during my novice year of rowing. It was where I raced my first 2k. Of course it was fun winning, but perhaps the best thing about this race was how well it put things into perspective for me. As a novice, I had no idea how we would do against the other crews. I remember sitting at the start of my first race, looking over at girls next to us, and thinking there was no way we could win a race against girls with so much experience or those who looked so much bigger and stronger than us. It was exciting to watch the last 8 months of hard work pay off and it really opened my eyes to the possibility that I could actually be good in this sport. It was sort of a turning point for me, and it really helped motivate me to do well the following year.

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