From Sacramento to Tokyo? How this fitness trainer’s Olympic dream is close to reality

A Sacramento fitness trainer is one step away from fulfilling her dream of competing in the Olympics.

Last year, Kelli Vandermoer tried out for Season 3 of the “The Next Olympic Hopeful,” sponsored by Milk Life and 24 Hour Fitness. An employee of 24 Hour Fitness Sunrise, she was one of nearly 5,000 people across the country who applied online or tried out at one of the gyms for a chance to compete in one of six Olympic sports. The field was narrowed to 50 finalists last summer.

In December, she was named to Team USA and next month will move from Sacramento to Oklahoma City to train at the U.S. Olympic Training Center.

Her sport? Rowing. That, in itself, is a testament to the type of athlete she is. The 6-foot-1, 180-pound Vandermoer has never competed in rowing at any level.

“(It’s) just one of the hardest things,” Vandermoer said. “You have to have stability, have to have balance, you have to have strength, you have to have power and you have to be able to have the endurance to keep it going the whole time.”

In getting to where she is now, Vandermoer overcame personal tragedies – her father’s sudden death during her sophomore year at Humboldt State University and a bad car wreck during her final year in college. She transferred from Humboldt to the East Bay to be closer to home.

After college, Vandermoer and her mother moved to Sacramento, where they have family. Vandermoer started working at 24 Hour Fitness and continued her athletic training.

She was initially hesitant about trying out for the show’s first season in 2017 because she had just settled into her new job and wasn’t sure how the show would help her realize her dreams of being a track star.

“At that time it didn’t seem like a big thing to me because it was the first year — I don’t know if this is real, I didn’t know if I was gonna go out for it. So I was like, no, I’m not. I’m focused. I know what I’m doing. I got my training down to a T. I’m going to keep my eye on the prize and just hope that all paths lead where I want to go.”

By the time the third season rolled around in 2019, things had changed. The tryouts weren’t held in Sacramento, so Vandermoer and her mother drove to San Jose. And even though the workout went “terribly” in her mind, it was still good enough to land her a spot as one of the 50 finalists (25 men and 25 women) selected to travel to the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The first day consisted of specific tryouts for each of the six sports: weightlifting, cycling, rugby, rowing, bobsledding and skeleton.

“All (six) sports had been nothing that I had tried before, but rowing had piqued an interest because the team at my college had tried to recruit me,” she said. “I never rowed before in my life except for on the machine which, I found out fast, I’ve never done right in my entire life. It’s 70 percent legs, 20 percent abs, 10 percent arms. If you feel like you’re doing an upper body (workout), you got to stop. You’re hurting yourself.”

Despite not being named one of the competition’s winners, she still earned a runner-up position for rowing and received an invite to train with the U.S. Rowing team.

“It was still an awesome feeling. (The) biggest thing that I miss is my dad and my mom always talking about how proud they are of me and talking about all my stuff that I have going on. And it’s been so long since I’ve felt like they’ve had something to be proud of.

“It still hasn’t even set in that I’m as far as I am. It’ll only set in the minute I’m in a new area, new change, new place. But it’s been awesome. This is what I’ve wanted my whole life and I just didn’t know how I was going to get it.”

Since her appearance on “The Next Olympic Hopeful” on NBC, Vandermoer has traveled to two Olympic camps and will go to a third one in early March.

“The first camp was actually learning how to row,” she said. “We went from a quad boat, to a double, to a single and got to learn all of those. In December, we went back for another camp and this one was a camp/time trial. So we had to do a lot of tests on the ERG and that was our basis of (whether) we got invited back or not.

“I got invited back. I move soon and then I start full time training and go for gold.”

For her, the prospect of being an Olympian and making it to Tokyo would be almost indescribable.

“Is there even a word to describe that? It would be mind blowing. All the hours that I’ve gotten up at like 2:30 a.m. to do 3 a.m. workouts and be able to hit my next workout ... Who does that just to have fun?

“I want to make people proud, but I want to make myself proud. I will finally feel like I’ve actually accomplished something greater than myself and I know that my dad’s up there saying ‘shut that mess up every time you’re upset and sad about something cause it’s going to be OK.’”

To read more about Vandermoer, see her Go Fund Me page.

This story was originally published February 24, 2020 at 3:53 PM.