July 29, 1996
LOCAL HERO
KORN'S MOM: `I'M SO PROUD OF YOU ... I KNEW YOU HAD IT IN YOU'
By CHRIS STEVENSON
Team Sun
LAKE LANIER, Ga. -- The first time she raced, just four years ago, she and her partner ended up going across all six lanes of the course.
Yesterday, national team rookie Alison Korn and the rest of Canada's women's eight powered their way straight to the medal podium at the Centennial Olympic Games.
"I knew you had it in you," sobbed her mother, Janet Snowling, as she and Charles Thomas, Korn's boyfriend, admired her precious metal.
"I'm so proud of you. What a surge, what a surge, what a surge!"
The three of them joined in a silent hug, their heads touching, the medal pinned between them and it looked as though they were drawing their emotion from it, tears sparkling on each of their cheeks.
The finish of the women's eight had left Korn, her seven teammates, coxswain Lesley Thompson, Snowling, Thomas and Canadian rowing fans needing a dip in Lake Lanier.
While the Romanians were comfortable winners, the Canadians summoned up an incredible finish over the last 400 metres of the 2000-metre race to overtake the boats of the Belorussians and Americans for the silver.
When the agony that is the final 500 metres of an Olympic race blotted out their vision, squeezed their lungs and turned their legs and arms into burning fuses, they found a way to do more.
"Coming into the last 500 (metres), Lesley said we were fourth," said Korn.
"I saw red. I said to myself, `There's no way we're coming fourth.' That's all I remember about the race. The rest is a blur."
The Canadian boat was the fastest on the water over that last 500, covering the distance between nothing and silver in one minute and 34.33 seconds.
They edged the third-place Belorussian boat by 39/100ths of a second.
"I almost lost a lung," said Thomas.
"It's a feeling of satisfaction," he said, his eyes teary as he looked at Korn wearing the medal.
"It's satisfying to see her win the silver."
"You don't win silver," Korn interjected.
"I don't buy that Nike ad," said Thomas. "It was satisfying, but not surprising, to see it happen."
"After the race, I heard my mother first," said Korn. "She was really shrieking. She sounded almost delirious. I was worried about her, actually. Her face was crimson. First she was sobbing, then she was laughing. Then she kissed me about 1,000 times and grabbed me and gave me a big hug."
Four years ago, the Ottawa native was a hockey and basketball player at McGill and turned down her friend's suggestion she try rowing because they trained too early in the morning.
That first race certainly gave no hint of the future.
"We were completely out of control," Korn laughed yesterday.
At 6-foot-2 and 175 pounds, she caught the eye of national team coaches at the Olympic trials last year and grabbed a seat in the eight.
"She brought a real freshness to the team," said the 36-year-old Thompson, who is on her fifth Olympic team and won gold with the eights in 1992 in Barcelona.
"She would ask `Why?' for the most obvious questions. I thought she asked such dumb questions, but they would make you go back to the basics. There were no expectations from her, no preset notions of what should be. They made you not take anything for granted."
How many dumb questions were there?
"Lots," said Thompson.
"But she's just learned a lot. We're all equal on a crew. She was in there pulling 100% just like everybody else."
With many of Canada's highest profile rowers and scullers prepared to retire, there will be opportunities for rowers like Korn to grow.
"She has a great heart and she tries extremely hard," said Canadian team head coach Brian Richardson. "The best of Alison Korn is yet to come."
The sprint had been a problem for the women's eight in earlier races. The roar of the crowd and the cries from the other boats made it difficult for them to hear Thompson and mount a co-ordinated attack.
At a strategy meeting Saturday night, they came up with a set of instructions they would each follow when they hit the final jam, starting with an attack five, said Korn, "five of the hardest strokes of your life.
"We just knew we had to put our heads down and do it. All nine of us did it. We said, `Here we go,' and boom, we did it. We didn't let ourselves down or each other down and we had our best race."
And that's what games are all about.
Their best was worth a silver yesterday, but you'd have a hard time convincing three people locked in a silent embrace that gold could be any better.
