Inside WAIS – Don’t Rule Me Out

“I think everyone around Australia was absolutely astounded. They wanted to know how I could train for only two months and still make nationals. I said, because everyone doubted me. Everyone thought as soon as I got diagnosed with this, having infusions and spending days on end in bed, everyone thought ‘Oh yeah, Nat’s going to finish now.’ I said, why would I? I’m not going to give up that easily.”

Natalie Bale is an Australian Olympic rower. She was only a young pup, aged 22, when she rowed in the Beijing 2008 Olympics. She’s convinced her best years are ahead of her and wants a gold medal. But, what you don’t know about her is she’s spent the last year off the water and has only started training again recently. Was she taking time off for a little rest and recovery? Well no. Bale has been barely able to sleep at night because of pain in her spine. How will she get back in the boat and take gold in London, 2012?

“At the end of 2008 I started to get hip and back troubles again. All of 2009 I would have lots of pain at night-time and stuff like that. By the time it got to the end of the year I just couldn’t train properly. It got to the point where anti-inflammatories weren’t working and pain killers just weren’t even making a dent,” said the Western Australian Institute of Sport scholarship holder.

Bale was sent to WAIS Sports Doctor, Carmel Goodman, and consequently referred to a rheumatologist. Within a week she was diagnosed with Ankylosing spondylitis, an autoimmune disorder in which the body’s immune system becomes hyperactive and mistakes body parts for pathogens and attacks them. In Bale’s case, calcium has built up in her spine potentially causing the vertebrae to fuse together.

“I was getting really tired because my body was using extra energy to combat this. I couldn’t even sleep at night because the pain while resting was worse than anything else,” she said. “I had to start taking remicade, which suppresses my immune system so I don’t get that inflammation in my joints.”

Over the period trailing 2008-2009, the Olympian battled out for months swapping spine and hip pain for bouts of vomiting, headache and liver problems.

“It was, like, toxic to my body so I was so tired all the time,” she said. “I went to Nationals but then couldn’t go to trials because I was vomiting and the second drug I was taking was screwing up my liver.”

Bale said she is now on a monthly injection and is feeling better than before.

Having never rowed before, nor having any kind of idea, what it is exactly, that this 187cm tall blonde bombshell actually does, I asked what being a rower is all about. Is the life of an amateur elite-athlete full of chocolate love hearts, roses and accolades from fans? Well, not exactly.

“We do two and a half day cycles so we have three sessions for two days and then two on the third day and then have the afternoon off. We’ll do two rowing sessions in the morning probably rack up about 40km in the morning and then in the afternoon we’ll either do weights or the bike. Your first session when you go out on the eight would be a minimum of 25km sometimes even more if you’re going up the river. It’s worse if you’re going against the wind. Sometimes I’m like, do I start crying now or later,” she said.

“I say to kids, you go to school between nine and three, right? Leading up to the Olympics we were doing that many hours per day training. So, while you’re sitting at your desk or whatever that’s how many hours a day between six o’clock in the morning and five o’clock at night we would have fitted in for training.”

When Bale puts her coffee down I can see calices nearly a centimetre thick from where the oar has scraped along her hands for hours on end. She’d put a lumberjack to shame.

Bale got into rowing through the ‘smarter than smoking’ talent search program run by WAIS back in 1999. Scouts went to Penrhos College, her school at the time, when she was 13 and noticed she had long arms and legs.

“They said ‘Oh you’d be a really good rower.’ So I went through the phase two testing and I got dad to take me,” she said. “They got me to do all sorts of weird tests like sitting height and I was like: Why are they measuring my limb length for? They said ‘it’s really good for rowing you know. You could be really good’. We then did this beep test and I was the last person running. By the time I got to like level 12 or something like that, they told me I could stop.”

Bale was consequently sent off to Fremantle Rowing Club where she learnt to row, was put into the WAIS Junior Development Squad and says everything has taken shape from there.

Bale is now well back on track and wants to go to the London Olympics and bring home a gold medal for Australia.

“London is definitely the goal,” she said. “Like most athletes, I don’t want to go out when I’m not performing. I mean, in the past year when I was having all of these health problems I could’ve hung up my hat, but I know that my days aren’t over.”

Bale believes her coaches, Lincoln Handley and Antonio Maurogiovanni, often help her through the use of reverse psychology. Phrases such as “Oh Natalie, c’mon the Romanian girl is beating you” in a thick Italian accent from Maurogiovanni, seems to provide her with the mental strength to push through a difficult set. “I think of anyone, Antonio is the toughest,” she said. “He knows people’s limits and he knows how to push people to those limits and beyond those limits.”

Bale won her first ever international gold medal at Eton course in London in 2005 when she was just 19. It’s the same course, which will be used for the Olympics Games in London in two years. “I would love to do that,” she said. “To return to international competition and win a gold medal in the women’s pair, that’d be pretty sweet.”

Luke Quinlivan

– Luke is an Australian water polo representative who is majoring in journalism at ECU.