Gilbert's row to the Paralympics

By Aerial Gilbert

From the time I was two years old, when I took my first swimming lesson and then competed in my first swim meet at five, being a competitive athlete would have a thread of continuity throughout my life. I have always been a good athlete, trying a broad spectrum of sports and competing in swimming, tennis, and
basketball throughout elementary and high school.

It was in my first year in college that I was watching the Olympics and discovered rowing. I knew immediately that was the sport for me. I rowed for Mills College and loved the teamwork, dedication, strength and stamina that the sport demanded. After leaving college I continued rowing in a single for my own enjoyment on San Francisco Bay while working as a registered nurse at a local hospital.

In 1988 my life changed in an instant. I used eye drops which, unbeknownst to me, had been tampered with and contained the acid lye. I suddenly found myself unable to do the simplest task like walking through my house, finding my clothes and getting toothpaste on my toothbrush. My life as I knew it was over and for the next six months I didn’t do anything except exist in the most fundamental way.

At a period in my life where I was incompetent at everything a friend came to my house and told me I was going rowing with her in a double. She told me I didn’t need to see, I would remember how to row and I didn’t have a choice in the matter. Reluctantly, I went with her. She helped me into the boat and we pushed off the dock. After a few shaky strokes I relaxed and regained my confidence adding more pressure to the stroke and, for the first time in six months, I was moving comfortably through space and experiencing the joy of the sport. That was a gift that created a pivotal moment of change that allowed me to create a whole new life for myself.

I went to a school for the blind to learn Braille, cane travel and other techniques that allow me to be
Independent and how to use a computer that reads to me. I was a beginner at everything but continued to row, which was the only time I could feel competent and confident. I received my first Guide Dog, Webster, who gave me the same kind of confidence to move on land the way I was able to move on the water. With the support of my family, the friends that stood by me, Webster and rowing I had the confidence and motivation to re-establish my life, get a full-time job, build a community of friends through rowing and meet my husband.

I have always been able to find women partners to train with on a regular basis and around 1990 I started competing in local regattas. In 1999, 2000 and 2001 my rowing partner and I navigated the 33nm Catalina Crossing from Marina Del Rey to Catalina Island (California) in open water.

In 2002, while perusing the US Rowing website, I came across a small article looking for athletes to participate in the first US National Adaptive Rowing Team that was to compete in the World Rowing Championships in Seville, Spain. I never thought of myself as an “adaptive” rower; I was competing on an equal playing field with sighted rowers. I contacted Isabel Bohn, who was in charge of the programme and learned that they were hoping the programme would lead to rowing being accepted as an official Paralympic sport. If this were to happen it would open the doors to boathouses around the country to people with disabilities, so they could experience the same kind of joy of the sport that I get from it.

The programme has grown since 2002 when the first team travelled to Spain to compete at the World Rowing Championships (unlike most adaptive sports, the adaptive rowing team competes in the non-adaptive World Championships). We had to pay our own way, were given a boat that hadn’t been used since the ‘76 Olympics, were housed in a separate hotel (which was not wheelchair accessible) from the rest of the US team and felt like we didn’t belong on the world arena. We turned a few heads navigating the venue with wheel chairs, prosthetic legs and canes and, when we came home with a bronze medal in the four and gold in the double, we altered the course of adaptive rowing in the US. Every year since 2002, the number of countries participating and the level of competition has increased. In Eton at the World Rowing Championships this past year, 24 countries participated and all of the events had heats, repechages and finals.

In May 2005 rowing was added as an official Paralympics sport and will be included for the first time in 2008 in the Paralympics in Beijing. In order to have a chance of rowing being included in the
Paralympics the organizers realised that if they asked for a small number of events, mixing disabilities and gender, the chances of being accepted were far greater. As a result, there are three classifications of events, depending on how you row:
1. Legs, trunk and arms rowers (LTAMX4+), such as someone who is blind or rows with a prosthetic leg, compete in a four with a coxswain. There has to be at least two women in the boat and the disabilities must be mixed.
2. The second classification is for athletes who can use their trunk and arms (TA2x), rowing in a mixed gender double.
3. Rowers who can only use their arms (AM1x, AW1x) row in a single. They have separate events for gender.

As athletes we come from all over the country, train hard and share the common experience of living with a disability. Like the athletes competing to be on the regular national team, we go through selection camp and work hard to make the team. When we come together to prepare for the World Rowing Championships, we share the added dimension of adapting because of our individual disabilities and gender in one boat. As women we are smaller than the men and we have to learn to blend together to make the boat move efficiently. As athletes with different disabilities, we have boat balance challenges from missing limbs and rowing with prostheses.

Throughout the year when I am training away from the rest of the adaptive team, I row with the Marin Advanced Masters Women’s programme in California. I am the only blind rower in a boathouse of 350 members. The women’s team takes turns driving 30 miles round-trip, four days a week, to pick me up and drive me to the boathouse so that I can be on the water with the team at 5:30am. They don’t treat me any different than other rowers; I am a full member of the team, competing at the same level and with the same expectations.

Rowing has been a metaphor for the interdependence I experience that allows me to lead a full life. I credit my family, friends, rowing partners and my current Guide Dog, Hedda, with facilitating things to make my dreams come true. When I made the first team that went to Seville in 2002, I then set for myself the long-term goal of making the first adaptive team that will go to the Paralympics to represent the US in Beijing in 2008. Five years ago that seemed like a long time, but now there is 18 months to go.

Aerial Gilbert lives in northern California, USA and competes regularly at rowing regattas throughout the United States. Aerial currently actively promotes indoor rowing for the blind which has become an official competition at this year’s Junior Blind Olympics. Aerial is an inductee into the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame (2004).

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