Nikola Girke: the Canadian with the CAN-DO spirit

Having first represented Canada in the 470 at Athens 2004, she switched to the RS:X windsurfer for Beijing 2008 and London 2012 before switching again to race with Luke Ramsay in the Nacra 17 mixed multihull, before switching back to the RS:X. And now her fourth Olympic steed, the iQFOiL windsurfer for a possible Paris 2024.

“Last summer at home in Vancouver I took up foiling on a windsurfer just for fun,” she recalls. “I thought I had retired from Olympic competition but when I took up windsurf foiling it was just so much fun. You crash a lot in the beginning but, like anything, the more you do it the better you get. The local community was so helpful and pushed me to do more and I was getting better and better on my foiling equipment. Then I jumped on the iQFOiL and I couldn’t even gybe, it’s just so different to what I was used to and so unforgiving. The board is so much wider than what I was used to, the sail, the shims, the rake, everything was different.”

Gradually Girke could execute a few gybes here and there. “But not pretty ones, and not very often. When you’re gybing 50 per cent of the time but crashing the other 50 per cent it’s extremely exhausting.”

Having only jumped on to an iQFOiL for the first time at the end of last year, Girke’s run at Olympic qualification is late, to put it mildly. Which is why the Canadian is reluctant to call it a campaign. In which case… why do it at all? The answer comes partly from two of her favourite motivational quotes, ones that she finds herself using quite frequently in her job as an executive coach.

“Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.”

“The only thing that’s harder to swallow than failure is regret.”

“So I thought to myself, why not do it?” Which is how Girke finds herself in Palma competing at the Trofeo Princesa Sofia with less than three weeks until the Semaine Olympique Francaise in the South of France, the so-called ‘Last Chance Regatta’. This is the one and only remaining opportunity for Girke to book her spot at Paris 2024.

Asked what the likelihood is of Girke grabbing one of those remaining few nationals spots for Canada she replies: “It’s definitely possible. I’d say it’s definitely not impossible and with the iQFOiL’s format for medal races, that changes things up so completely.”

Certainly the sudden-death nature of the iQFOiL’s final-day format has been controversial at times, but the upside is that up-and-coming competitors like Girke might be able to fight their way through to a good result.

For all the different boats and boards she has raced over the years, Girke already marks out the iQFOiL windsurfer as her favourite. “It’s just so much fun going out on the board, foiling around. But it’s also the first discipline where people keep telling me I’m not heavy enough. I’m 5ft 10in and getting my weight below 64kg for the RS:X board was really, really hard. It was the same for the 470 and the Nacra 17, trying to keep the weight off.

“So it was actually funny the day that I decided to do the IQ. I saw two people in the windsurfing scene and they’re like, ‘you’re not big enough.’ ‘Oh, really what?’ ‘Yeah, you’re gonna have to bulk up!’ So for the first time in my life I went to the gym to actually gain weight, to put on muscle.”

One of the other challenges is funding a campaign as Girke is not part of the Canadian national team set-up. So Girke is paying her own way but also helped by a few sponsors, including Park Retirement Living back in Vancouver. “They have quite a few independent, retirement homes and they’re beautiful places. So I’m hoping they’ll save me a spot,” she laughs. “That’s the deal!”

Not that Girke is contemplating retirement any time soon. “A lot of the people I talk to when I’m coaching them, quite a few are only in their 30s or 40s but they’re down themselves about believing there are things in their life that they can’t do any more. ‘I don’t have the time’ or ‘my body doesn’t work anymore like it used to…’ And I don’t bring it up that often but if it’s the right moment I’ll say ‘Well, I went to my last Olympics at 43, so if you keep at it, and keep your body fit and healthy, then you know it’s going to last a lot longer.’”

Girke doesn’t think like most people. She seems not to see the reasons why not to do something. “Life is really short so why wouldn’t you keep on trying things?” Which is the ‘CAN-do’ spirit that is propelling Girke on to contemplating yet another shot at the Los Angeles 2028 Games, by which time she will be 51 years old. First things first, though. Now is the moment to grab that spot for Paris 2024.