2024-08-04 04:39:08
All eyes were on the channel – Viktorija Senkutė, who debuted at the Olympic Games, was there with all her might in the final.
“Now the whole world will know Victoria,” he said later, after the tension over the finish had been replaced by great joy over the Olympic bronze medal.
M. Griškonis, like Saulius Ritter, who was together with him, knows very well how much physical strength, psychological strength and how much incomprehensible devotion to sports and to himself an Olympic medal requires.
Both of them shone with silver in the doubles at the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016. 38-year-old M. Griškonis knows perfectly well the feeling of fighting in singles – he owns 7 European Championships (3 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze) and two World Championship bronze medals.
“A single seat is something special. An Olympic medal in the eight or single is the same, but remove one person from the middle of the eight, then even we rowers from other countries would not recognize that person, – said M. Griškonis. – The whole world will know Victoria. Single seat is like a gladiatorial battle. Her name, surname – now everyone will know that she is Lithuanian and so strong that she won an Olympic medal. It will go down in history. And this is the only Olympic medal in women’s singles. There was never even a final.”
The president of the Lithuanian Rowing Federation (LIF) who jumped from the boat into the bureaucratic corridors did not hide his joy.
V. Senkutė, who presented the bronze to Lithuania and spoke emotionally after the final, ended the performances of the Lithuanian rowers on the most impressive note. On Friday, Kamilė Kralikaitė and Ieva Adomavičiūtė, who started training together only last year, took the fifth place in the A final.
The Stankūnai brothers appeared in the B final and won 8th place. On Saturday, even before V. Senkutė’s start, Giedrius Bieliauskas appeared in the B final. He was tenth overall.
The performance of double rowers Donata Karalienė and Dovilė Rimkutė ended most painfully. It was she who brought medal expectations to the Paris Olympics. However, after failing to pass the selection, the second – the so-called consolation – chance was burned, after which D. Rimkutė cried sincerely, and D. Karalienė did not hide her sadness and disappointment.
“Before the Olympics, we expected rowing to bring home a medal, but you all know that we and the whole community expected a different crew. But this is sport and it is unpredictable. The Olympic Games are something special, because most of the athletes get too nervous and burn out. This day showed that Victoria was disconnected from all side thoughts”, said M. Griškonis.
He also gave advice to V. Senkute, who demonstrates an exceptionally strong character.
“We talked to her. As a former colleague, an athlete, I gave her simple advice – stay away from the media, Instagram, neighbors, friends. She managed to do it”, M. Griškonis was happy.
And this joy could not exist.
Lrytas.lt already wrote that in 2021, after the European Championship, V. Senkutė heard from the former LIF authorities that her funding would be terminated. Soon she retired from rowing, sat on a bicycle and even won the silver of the Lithuanian championship, managed to participate in the European road cycling competition.
It was M. Griškonis, together with S. Ritter, who became the general secretary of LIF, who made efforts for V. Senkutė to return. Fortunately, the love for swimming instilled by her father has always flowed through the athlete’s veins.
“The former head of the federation (Dainius Pavilionis, – ed.) removed V. Senkutė from the national team and cut off funding before Saul and I became leaders. When Saulius and I returned, we believed in Victoria, because she was our colleague. We got her back to the national team, she started training with the national team again and here we are – we have what we have. After three years of returning to this sport, she is standing on the podium at the Olympic Games”, said M. Griškonis about the walk that eventually turned into Lithuania’s bronze medal at the Paris Olympic Games.
The next step, according to M. Griškonis, who allowed Lithuania to have a really strong rowing team at the Paris Games, is the return of coach Mykolas Masilionis. In 2020, the latter left the national team and started working with Russia after some Lithuanian athletes expressed their indignation at the working methods.
M. Masilionis left the aggressor after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Soon, he again stood at the helm of the Lithuanian Rowing Federation national team.
“The coach probably had the greatest influence on the rowers’ achievements. LIF may have suffered in the media and everywhere else, but the decision made by the federation leadership to invite him is a good one. It was thanks to him that we had five crews here,” said M. Griškonis, thus alluding to the scandal that later rocked LIF regarding world and European champion Martynas Dziaugis.
However, the invitation to return, the coach’s contribution is only one side.
M. Griškonis fully agrees that the last work should be done by no one else, but the athlete in the single seat.
Those in Paris lrytas.lt journalists have repeatedly convinced themselves of V. Senkutė’s professionalism and complete dedication to the plan and work.
“The most important thing is that she is stubborn. For every athlete, stubbornness is the most important trait. And especially in a single seat, because when you are in a team, you can consult, ask the other’s opinion, and here you are alone with yourself. She is stubborn, strong, which she proved today, – M. Griškonis mentioned V. Senkutė’s character traits. – But the most important thing is that she is smart. Not only physical functional preparation is very important, but also the brain that controls the body.”
2024-08-04 04:39:08