Emma Aastrand Jorgensen, a three-time Olympian with three Games medals, spent Tuesday night crying herself to sleep.
It’s not the usual preparation the night before a big Olympic race, but such was the disappointment from what had unfolded just hours earlier at the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium.
It’s the harsh reality of the Olympic Games, where you spend several years of preparation getting ready for an event that can be over in the blink of an eye.
And if it doesn’t turn out well, it can leave athletes inconsolable, empty and perplexed. On Tuesday in Paris, that was the real world for Jorgensen and her kayak double 500m partner, Frederikke Hauge Matthiesen.
Arriving in the French capital as genuine medal prospects after becoming world champions in Duisburg last year, Jorgensen and Matthiesen had a day they would like to forget. Third in their heat, it forced them into the quarter finals – on paper, a much easier race.
But then the Danes finished fifth in the quarter final, and their Olympics were over. Jorgensen still had the kayak single 500m to come, a race in which she has won silver and bronze at previous Games, but on Tuesday night that was far from her mind.
“I have been crying a lot last night, it’s been hard to process it,” Jorgensen said after qualifying for the K1 500m semi-finals.
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“I can definitely feel it in my mind and in my body that yesterday was such a sad and difficult day to be in.
“We were sitting very bad in the heat. Normally it is not that bad. We have worked a lot this year on sitting a little more side on, a little twisted, but yesterday was our worst day ever in our K2. That sucks and it shouldn’t be on a day like yesterday.”
Every athlete has bad days. Jorgensen knows it is what helps you become a stronger athlete. It would just be better if one of those bad days didn’t happen, as Jorgensen noted, at the Olympics.
“That’s how it is sometimes. That’s sport when it’s at its worst,” she said.
“If you want to be the best you have to give 100 per cent, you just have to have a really good day as well, and we didn’t, and that sucks a lot.
“We are very empty of words because we know we are way better than most of the boats here. Of course everyone is here to win, and everybody should be here to win. It’s crazy and it was definitely not our proudest moment.”
The experience of Jorgensen shone through on Wednesday, when she was able to put behind her the dramas of 24 hours earlier, and her very little sleep from the night before, to qualify second in her K1 500m to move straight into the semi-final.
“Yesterday was yesterday, and now I just try to look forward,” Jorgensen said after the race.
“Of course it will still come up now and then in my mind, trying to figure out what happened on Tuesday. But I have to move on in my K1. I hope that this can help me move through the next few days.”
And although she might not admit it right now, perhaps having one less race to think about might actually work in her favour, as she aims to win a third consecutive Olympic medal in the same event.
“For sure it is positive, but of course I would like a lot to have both races and to have two chances to have a good result,” she said.
“But if you look on that side, it’s good to be able to focus on just one thing and I can get into a good rhythm in K1 and just focus on that.
“From now on its all on me, and not on anyone else.”
