As a world-class rower, Lisa Roman knows a thing or two about endurance.

Take, for instance, a 2,000-metre race – the distance Roman traverses in competition with the Canadian Olympic women's eight crew.

By the midway point, anaerobic energy has long since been spent, oxygen consumption is maxing out, and lactic acid is building up. The last 1,000 metres requires athletes, muscles already burning, to dig deep into their physical reserves while flexing the mental toughness to maintain proper technique. 

The home stretch to Roman's second Olympic appearance has tested her physical and mental fortitude in similar fashion.

After a one-year postponement due to the COVID-19 pandemic which cost the 31-year-old Langley, B.C. product – and all Olympic athletes – an additional year of sweat equity, she will finally hit the water this weekend for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, as it's still curiously dubbed despite the delay.

Rowing will be contested over the first week of the Games, with the women's eight heats (July 25), repechage (July 28) and final (July 30) staged at Tokyo's Sea Forest Waterway – albeit without any fans at the venue – and televised in Canada by the CBC.

Back home in B.C., sports fans at the University of the Fraser Valley will be among Roman's most fervent supporters. Roman got her start in the sport through the UFV rowing club's learn-to-row program back in 2007, and she's gone on to become the first-ever Cascades alum – across all sports – to compete at the Olympics.

"This year, for sure, felt like the longest," Roman said in a recent phone conversation with GoCascades.ca, prior to departing for Tokyo. 

"I had kind of thought they'd postpone the Olympics for three months, four months, six months . . . and then it turned into a whole year. I was like, 'Wow, this is overwhelming,' mostly because I didn't take any time off after 2016 – I just hit the ground running right out of the gate for 2020. So for me, it was hard for me to wrap my mind around it not coming to an end, and taking on another whole year.

"It's been hard, but it's also been rewarding."  

Roman's Olympic journey began in unlikely fashion. She'd never set foot in a racing boat prior to arriving on UFV's campus as an 18-year-old. Yet with a high-performance athletic background, highlighted by 14 years of competitive figure skating, she proved to be a quick study. 

Under the tutelage of head coach Liz Chisholm, she was the Cascades' top female rower within a year, and during her sophomore season, she tried out for and made Team B.C. for the Canada Summer Games. After winning three medals (gold in women's pairs and fours, silver in the eight) in Charlottetown, PEI, she began seeking out scholarship opportunities south of the border and ended up at Washington State University where she fashioned a highly decorated career, highlighted by second team All-America honours as a senior.

In 2011, Roman earned a spot on Canada's women's eight for the U23 World Rowing Championships, and helped the team win the gold medal and set a world age-class record. After graduating from Washington State in 2012, she was invited to join Rowing Canada's national training centre, and she went on to be part of five medal-winning boats at the senior World Championships (silver in 2014, 2017 and 2018, bronze in 2013 and 2015).

Roman got her first taste of the Olympics in 2016, finishing fifth with the women's eight in Rio de Janeiro. She helped Canada qualify its women's eight boat for the Tokyo Games thanks to a fourth-place finish at the 2019 World Championships, and after months of seat racing and evaluation, she was officially selected for her second Olympic team on June 15, part of Canada's largest Olympic rowing contingent in 25 years.

Asked if she could have imagined herself as a future two-time Olympian during her early days at UFV, Roman chuckled.

"No, definitely not!" she said with a laugh. "I definitely had motivation and drive when it came to sport – I was a figure skater for several years. But in skating, I was at my pinnacle. I wasn't getting any better. I was just staying the same, and I kind of knew I had more in me to give. 

"When I found rowing and started to realize I could work hard at this and be good, I started to develop that mentality of, there's nothing stopping me from doing the sport and being good at it. I started to really create my craft over time. 

"A lot my teammates now would say . . . every time I get in the boat, I can find a way to make people work together and make the boat go fast. I think that has helped me over the years.

"You want to get everyone on the same page and make the boat go fast, whether it's the slowest person on the team or the fastest. If you can get the best out of that person in that moment, you can probably be one of the faster boats. I think I've always challenged myself to bring out the best in people.

"I have really enjoyed the journey I've taken. I've definitely looked back and thought, 'How did I get here?' I think it's just hard work – creating your craft and what you're good at, and then just working on it and keeping people around you positive. That's where my success has come from – just hard work and dedication to the sport."  

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One of the most interesting indicators of how surreal Roman's past 18 months have been is that her name isn't technically Lisa Roman.

In September 2019, she married Marcel Samuel and took his surname. But she chose not to update her passport right away, in order to compete as Lisa Roman for her second Olympics.

What was supposed to be just a few more months, though, morphed into nearly two years after the COVID-19 postponement.

"It's awkward, and the pandemic made it even more complicated, because of course now I have to keep this going for another whole year," she said with a wry chuckle. "I'm constantly dealing with, 'Is your last name Roman or is it Samuel?' And I'm like, 'Oh my goodness!'"

The pandemic caused further difficulty for the newlyweds – with Lisa in Victoria at the national training centre since August 2020, Marcel was working in the Lower Mainland, and travel restrictions meant they went upwards of nine weeks at one point without seeing each other.

Yet through it all, Roman (or is it Samuel?) drew inspiration and strength from her teammates and coaching staff.

"There's a special group of girls here, and that was my motivation," she said. "I couldn't imagine them standing on the podium and me not being there. I was like, 'Nope, this has to happen. I can't stop now.' I know the team we have is strong enough to stand on the podium, and that is something I want to do and I want to be a part of.

"I've never been the fastest girl on the team, but I've always worked my butt off to be in the team close to the top. Last quad (prior to the Rio Olympics), I think I was near the bottom of the squad, and I told myself coming in that I didn't ever want to be in that spot again. I wanted to be near the top. So I worked really hard, especially in the first two years, to make sure that I put my point across – that that was going to be the level I was going to train at every day, and I was going to push myself to be that good all the time. I think when you start to dive into that, you start to really believe in yourself and what you're capable of, and push your boundaries. I think that's really what I did over the five years of this quadrennial – push myself to new levels, find new places I hadn't been before."

Looking ahead to Tokyo, Roman noted that the experience for athletes will be "very different" than the one she enjoyed in Rio.

"We are basically going into a complete quarantine," she said. "Last Olympics, we stayed there for over a week after in the Olympic village and went to a bunch of different events, whereas this one, you're strictly in the village, on the bus, to your venue, and then home. There is nothing else involved, and once our event is over, you're on a plane and out of there. It's going to be very different. They're still in a very bad spot with the pandemic (in Japan), so we have to respect that and do our due diligence to keep them safe as well, so I understand it."

As to her post-Toyko plans, Roman noted that she and her husband have discussed having kids, and she has ambitions of adding a Master's degree in counselling to her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from WSU. At this point, though, she's not ready to say these Olympics will mark the end of her rowing career. She's focused on making the most of the opportunity. 

"This Olympics will be special in the sense of, we haven't raced any competition in two years," she enthused. "We don't know anything about these other crews, and I think that makes it super-exciting. We're going in completely blind, and so are they. 

"At the end of the day, we're all very close in terms of our physiology and crews. At the top of the world, nobody's that different. It's more about who's going to do it on the day. 

"I'm excited to be part of that, to see what we can do."
 

 

Additionally, we are displaying a Team Canada unisuit signed by Lisa and her women's eight teammates from the Rio Olympics in our trophy case at the north end of Building E!

This very cool piece of memorabilia was donated by retired UFV rowing coach Liz Chisholm! pic.twitter.com/U9FemufAeN

— UFV Cascades (@UFVCascades) July 21, 2021

 

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