The Great Salt Lake and the Jordan River were the training grounds for this Olympic rower from Uganda.

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Past the industrial warehouses, with their dirty white concrete block walls and indescribable rectangular shapes, Olympian Kathleen Noble was rowing. Past the wagons and storage tanks, it sped off, its oars leaving circular wakes as it plunged them gently into the water like the slender legs of a water bug.

Neither the colorful graffiti decorating the belly of a viaduct, nor even a scruffy doll strapped in an abandoned cart, could catch his attention. As Noble pushed and pulled, pushed and pulled, her eyes took on a distant air, as if she had gone deep inside herself to a place where she couldn’t hear her lungs and muscles screaming.

Ahsan Iqbal opened the throttle on the 15 horsepower engine on his little green dinghy and still couldn’t keep up. The coach smiles. This undersized stretch of the surplus Jordan Canal, the tumultuous Great Salt Lake, and a monotonous indoor rower had served as Noble’s Olympic training ground for the past two years, and his training mates were mostly a group of high school students. . However, at the beginning of July, less than a month before the Tokyo Games, Noble seemed ready.

“She seemed very determined and for me that is such a key part,” Iqbal said of why he and his wife, Linda, the head coach of the Utah Crew Youth Rowing Club, agreed. to form Noble, who this week will compete as the first Olympic rower in Ugandan history. “If you do it because it’s cool, it’s not going to do it.”

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Kathleen Noble trains on the Jordan River in Salt Lake City on Thursday, July 8, 2021. Noble is the first Ugandan rower to qualify. She will participate in the Tokyo Olympics in rowing in a single scull.

Noble must have been determined because – pandemic aside – becoming an elite rower in a water-strapped state like Utah has its challenges.

“I didn’t think I could really find a place to row in Utah,” Noble said. “But it was something I knew I would regret if I never really tried.”

Noble, 26, was born in Uganda, a country in Central Africa, to a couple of Irish missionaries. She lived there during her high school education and became an accomplished swimmer who represented Uganda at the 2012 FINA Swimming World Championships. However, her relationship with the sport was love-hate, and when she moved to the United States to attend Princeton University, she left swimming behind.

Her college roommate was a rookie for the crew, and when she was in her sophomore year, Noble decided to give the sport a try. She had no vision of greatness, but her coaches saw potential.

“We knew straight away that Kathleen had a strong aerobic capacity that she had acquired during her swimming career”, Princeton chief Paul Rassam told goprincetontigers.com. “It was also clear that she had a good amount of natural power and natural boat feel – from day one she really seemed to understand how to hold onto the water and speed the boat past the puddle. of water. His form was solid right away.

A Ugandan coach saw her at a training camp and met her when she returned home the following summer. The country did not have a lot of resources for its rowers, but it could offer international opportunities. Noble competed at the Under-23 World Championships and figured that would be where his time as a national team athlete would end.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Kathleen Noble trains on the Jordan River in Salt Lake City on Thursday, July 8, 2021. Noble is the first Ugandan rower to qualify. She will participate in the Tokyo Olympics in rowing in a single scull.

Then, a few years later and a full year after graduating and quitting rowing, Noble got a call. The Ugandan Olympic Committee wanted her to participate in an Olympic qualifying regatta at the end of 2019.

There was only one problem. She would need to race in a single scull, which was a completely different animal from the eight-person crew she competed in at Princeton. Where she was previously responsible for an oar, she would control both. And where she had had eight teammates, including the coxswain, it would no longer be her.

Plus, she had gotten a job as a technician for the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City, where rowing wasn’t exactly part of the fabric. The only competitive team she could find was the Utah Crew, a team for 13-18 year olds. So she contacted the Iqbals and asked for their help – and the use of a boat.

“Rowing is like a global family. The rowers usually help each other, ”said Linda Iqbal. “So my first instinct was: here is someone who wants to row and we are going to help them. “

The Jordan is flat. Seaweed floats along the sides, undisturbed by the wind or the wake, until Noble glides, sometimes picking up sticky green strands on his oars.

“The water is disgusting, but there are mountains,” Noble said.

The canal only has water from May to early November, when Noble trains there. She spends the winter doing dry-field exercises, including hours on a standard indoor rower, or ERG. Then, for a brief window in March and April, it stops at Grand Lac Salé.

“It’s beautiful. Sometimes when it’s flat, it can be the most magnificent thing. You can just go in and go,” Noble said.

More often than not, the lake is so agitated by the wind that the rowers cannot train there. This probably makes it the closest approximation to what Noble will encounter. from Thursday in Tokyo.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Kathleen Noble trains on the Jordan River in Salt Lake City on Thursday, July 8, 2021. Noble is the first Ugandan rower to qualify. She will participate in the Tokyo Olympics in rowing in a single scull.

“Tokyo Bay, I’ve heard from everyone who’s been there, it’s not a good course. It’s hectic, ”Noble said. “It’s a crosswind. It’s a bay so it’s very open so it’s kind of like bigger waves. So, I’m not excited about it, to be honest.

The rough waters will be particularly difficult for Noble, who will be one of the smaller rowers on the Olympic field and more likely to be tossed about in the waves. Technically she should be racing as a lightweight, but the Olympics only offer an “Open” division in the single sculls. So the 5-foot-8, 135-pound Noble will take on women closer to 6-foot, 170-pounds.

When Noble was running the college boys of the Utah Crew, that disadvantage was huge. But after a year and a half of not racing with anyone else, Noble attended an elite training camp at the Vesper Row Club in Philadelphia last month. She went to finish third in the independence day regatta against a group of women vying for spots on the United States national team for the upcoming world championships.

“She was able to handle it and do some movements,” Ahsan Iqbal said of the weight disadvantage. “It’s the confidence I wanted her to have.”

Ahsan Iqbal rowed for MIT and also coached the Pakistani National Team in 2006. Linda Iqbal, who also started rowing at MIT under Ahsan’s encouragement, took several Utah Crew rowers to the National Championships. young people over the years. So they were successful. Yet they are in a state of disbelief that an athlete they have coached will actually compete in the Olympics.

It’s not that they didn’t think Noble had the talent, the competitive spirit, or the drive from the start. It’s more than she did here.

“It’s very surprising,” said Linda Iqbal. “Rowing in Utah is extremely difficult.

Because one body of water cannot be compared to another, and a fast race one day can be slow the next, Noble said she didn’t set any time or placement goals for Tokyo. She just wants to settle into this space deep inside her and let her muscles scream until they hoarse.

“I want to feel exhausted. I want to feel like I rowed as hard as possible, ”she said.

“So,” she added, “just, like, brave in the race, I guess.”

ROW TOKYO 2020

Skiff women

Schedule (all MDT schedules)

Thusday: Opening round, 6.30 p.m.

Friday: Recharge, 5:30 p.m.

Saturday: Semi-finals E / F, 6:20 p.m.

Sunday: Quarter-finals, 6 p.m.

On Monday: Semi-finals C / D, 5:50 p.m.

Tuesday: Semi-finals A / B, 7:58 p.m.

Wednesday: E / F Finals, 5:42 p.m.

July 29: A / B / C Finals, 5:45 p.m.

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