If not for the pandemic, she could have been at the Olympics right now

Kelli Vandermoer wakes up at 5 a.m. every day in her Oklahoma City apartment. She gets dressed, grabs breakfast and by 6:15 begins a warm-up circuit that’s “not really a warm-up — it’s a workout.”

Then it’s onto the water, where Vandermoer and her team row with all their strength for two hours. And that’s just the first of several daily training sessions.

If not for the pandemic, Vandermoer might have been living in the Tokyo Olympic Village right now. But despite the one-year delay of the Games due to the coronavirus plus continued uncertainty over how an enormous international athletic event will play out in a post-COVID-19 world, Vandermoer spends every day putting all her energy toward an Olympic dream she sees as attainable.

Sure, the pandemic cut her competition season short this spring, extending the timeline for Olympic qualification into next year. But 11 months ago Vandermoer was a 24 Hour Fitness trainer who’d never set foot in a racing boat.

That’s not to say she hasn’t been thinking about sports and The Olympics for much longer. As a high school freshman, Vandermoer made a list of goals with “The Olympics” at the top.

“It was just the idea of putting out into the universe what you want to attract,” she said. Vandemoer, who is now 25, never specified what sport would get her there.

A 6-foot-tall all-around athlete, Vandemoer dabbled in dance, soccer and gymnastics as a child, but eventually focused on track and field. She ran track at Cal State Humboldt until her father’s sudden death during her sophomore year prompted her to transfer to Cal State East Bay to be closer to her mother.

A second misfortune, a car accident that injured Vandermoer, forced her to put her athletic goals on pause during her last year of college. At that point, she and her mom moved to Sacramento. Vandermoer found a job at 24 Hour Fitness, where she worked in sales, operations and personal training — and continued to hope she could qualify for the Olympics as a track athlete training independently.

One morning, as Vandermoer ran on the treadmill at 3 a.m. before meeting her first personal training client of the day, she saw a TV ad: The reality show “The Next Olympic Hopeful” was recruiting participants for its third season. Vandermoer had heard of the show, which is sponsored in part by 24 Hour Fitness, but she brushed it off in the past. That morning, she decided to go for it.

Vandermoer passed an initial series of athletic tests administered in San Jose and won a chance to join 49 other athletes at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs to vie for a spot on one of the U.S. Olympic teams. Early portions of the training camp and TV show focused on testing participants’ overall athleticism; everyone ran, jumped and lifted weights as trainers and show host Apolo Ohno evaluated their abilities.

Then the athletes tried a variety of sports, including cycling, weightlifting and bobsled. When it came time for the test on rowing machines, what Vandermoer lacked in skill, she made up for with enthusiasm. She picked someone with rowing experience to set her pace and fell off her seat trying to keep up.

Nevertheless, a rowing coach noticed Vandermoer’s potential during her time on the show and invited her to a September 2019 training camp where she first tried rowing on the water. In December, Vandermoer was offered a spot on a top team and was positioned to seriously pursue Tokyo as a rower.

“It brought back what I wanted in life,” she said. “And no matter how far I go, the fact that I made it this far is just mind-blowing to me.”

Head east, to Oklahoma

Vandermoer moved to Oklahoma City in March to join a high-level team under the guidance of veteran coach Reilly Dampeer. The move happened to coincide with the pandemic’s rise and a pause on sporting events across the country.

The Olympic qualification process for rowing involves multiple stages. At the 2019 World Championships, nations qualified to have a certain number of boats at the Tokyo Olympics, but crew members could still change. A three-part series of Olympic trial races, the first of which had been set to take place in Sarasota, Florida, from March 17-21, would determine which individual athletes qualify. The Olympic trials have been pushed off to next year, with races scheduled to resume in February.

Some rowers were already in Sarasota when the country began to shut down in March. Dampeer was en route to the trials when she got a call that the event was canceled, and she had to turn around.

Vandermoer found out the Olympics would be postponed while watching the news one day after practice. Family and friends immediately sent her a barrage of text messages asking what she’d do next.

Vandermoer’s coach and 11 teammates held a meeting in the Oklahoma City apartment complex where almost all of them live to discuss their situation.

“Everyone was in a different place,” Vandermoer said, “But the biggest thing we have been told by our coach and that we talk about a lot is resilience. That idea of building it up, being able to be knocked down and how are you going to attack it and come out stronger. Being around a bunch of like-minded people made a huge difference.”

For Vandermoer, delays felt frustrating, but they also gave her extra time to adapt to a new sport.

“The rowing motion is not natural,” she said. “Coming from track and running, which the body feels like it’s made for, this sport is so hard and not anything like I thought it would be.”

She has focused heavily on honing her technique and said her coach has been emphasizing technique, strength and stamina for all the rowers in recent months.

“If we don’t get better now, when?” Vandermoer recalled Dampeer telling them.

Vandermoer said she thinks the extra training she’s getting will actually increase her chances of qualifying for the Olympics next spring. If she can achieve certain times she’ll get funding to attend the Olympic trials (rowers who don’t meet certain benchmarks must self-fund).

Out of the dozen rowers on Vandermoer’s team, not everyone will make the Olympics — a fact they must accept while simultaneously improving their own abilities. Vandermoer’s outlook on the uncertainty involved in the last steps of Olympic qualification remains practical yet optimistic.

“There’s nothing that’s gonna faze us at this point,” Vandermoer said. “We’re just going to go with the flow, work as hard as we can, get better.”

“There’s no straight path,” she added. “But I know my worth, I know I’m gonna make it.”

This story was originally published August 9, 2020 at 4:00 AM.