Dutch ace balancing family and pursuit of Olympic gold

She has won Olympic medals at three successive Games and is now gunning for her fourth. The Paris 2024 Olympic Games will be different in at least one respect. The 35-year-old is now a mother – her daughter is coming up for two years old. 

“Jessie Mae is the most important thing in my life,” she says. 

“She comes first. But within that framework, I try to push as hard as I can to get the result I want this summer.” 

With a change of focus can come a loss of motivation, but Bouwmeester says she has lost none of her drive.  

“For sure it [becoming a parent] brings new challenges,” she admits. “So it’s nice because I have to develop myself, evolve myself as a person again. But I’m definitely not losing motivation. 

“I do find it more difficult with questions about motherhood because I feel people are coming at you with their own mindset about motherhood, bringing their own judgments.” 

 If it’s understandable that Bouwmeester tires of the motherhood questions from the media and the rest of the world, it’s also inevitable that people ask given the physical rigours of hiking out of the side of an ILCA 6 dinghy. 

Fortunately for Bouwmeester she says her pregnancy was straightforward enough to allow her to train in the gym right up until the final week before giving birth in May 2022.  

The conundrum was how long to leave until after giving birth before she could commit to proper training again and Bouwmeester was careful about not returning too soon to full training or competition. 

When she did return, it was almost back in at the top, starting with a ninth place at the 2022 World Championships in October, around five months after giving birth. 

In early 2023, she was back to her winning ways, taking gold at the Europeans, the Princess Sofia Trophy and the Olympic Test Event in Marseille. 

Could it be that going through the process of motherhood has actually enhanced her physical performance? 

“It’s quite tough, combining bringing up a child with top sport, but it seems like I can do more now, and more easily than before.” 

 With time in scarcer supply than ever, Bouwmeester has been forced to get more efficient with her approach to training, and this hasn’t all been bad either.  

“I can push myself too much, now I am sometimes slowed down. 

“I have always been a hard worker. I feel I was maybe not always as naturally gifted as a sailor, but I think I was always working hard and that got me really far. 

“As you get older you really have to listen to your body as well, because you can’t afford an injury, not in sports and not in normal life. 

“So I think I’m learning that as well, that more is not always more. And it’s just a whole new balance I have to find, so this Olympic campaign is actually so much different from the other three I’ve done. It’s nice because it brings new challenges and we also have developed skills that we haven’t developed before.” 

However different this fourth Olympic campaign might be, Bouwmeester’s focus on the gold remains as laser-like as ever. She has won a silver from London 2012, a gold at Rio 2016 and a bronze at Tokyo 2020. 

However, just minutes after the medal ceremony in Tokyo, at the press conference when she was asked how many medals she had won in her career, Bouwmeester leaned into the microphone and said: “One.” 

The only medal she values is the gold from Rio. It was a mic-drop moment that went viral in The Netherlands, the blonde ambition there for all to see, and to admire, and to be a little bit scared of. 

Asked two and a half years later whether she still believes she has won only one Olympic medal, Bouwmeester doesn’t hesitate: “Yes, because I think in top sports, either you win or you don’t win. I think that’s the way it is. I started this campaign thinking I could still be the best and I see a lot of challenges sometimes.” 

A lean spell towards the end of 2023 might have made Bouwmeester wonder if she could really get back to her best for Paris, but she has kept the faith. “I didn’t expect to fall back maybe as much as I did, but I’m happy. I’m getting all the lessons now and hopefully I will have turned it around before this summer.” 

For one of the all-time greats in Olympic sailing, this is almost certainly the last campaign. Bouwmeester will always need a project, though, and she has already started making moves towards her next big thing. 

“I didn’t come from a wealthy background but I had lots of help when I was growing up. Now I want to set up a watersports academy in Scheveningen near where I live, because I want to make sailing and surfing and all watersports more accessible for people who can’t afford it. So that’s why I had a dream to make this happen. 

“I went to the Dutch Federation and we’re in the process of setting it up. I would really like get more kids on the water, and to make it possible for anyone, no matter the size of your wallet.”