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Silken Laumann
creating a new passion– the power of play

Inspired as a young girl by Nadia Comaneci in the 1976 Olympics Silken recreated her own excitement in the 1992 Olympics with her passion and drive to fulfill her dream. After all, this wasn’t supposed to happen. She wasn’t supposed to be in this boat, her leg had been shredded, torn apart by another rower’s scull just 10 weeks before.

Today Silken takes this same passion and
determination to champion children. The recipient of The 2003 National Child Day Award Silken is determined to impact the quality of our children’s life by creating positive experiences around physical activity and sport through the recently formed Silken Laumann Active Kid's Movement.

Silken’s passion for improving a child’s quality of life is carried to the world’s disadvantaged as an ambassador of Right to Play. Strengthening the rights of children to play enhances their healthy physical and psychosocial development and builds stronger communities.

Silken shares her challenges, and the learnings that have brought her to living her passion today– championing the rights of children to be healthy.

H&L What was it about Nadia Comaneci in the 76 Olympics that inspired you as an 11 year old?

Silken It was the excitement – the excitement around winning, winning for your country. And the fact that she was so good. I remember being impressed with her power, with her confidence that “here I am”. I made a connection to that confidence. I thought she had everything and I wanted to be the next Nadia Comaneci but I learned quickly that I wasn’t going to be a gymnast.

H&L From gymnast to rowing how’d that happen?

Silken I had always been very athletic and did a lot of different things. I tried gymnastics and was an 800 metre runner for a few years but was too tall for both, and I’m totally uncoordinated. These didn’t work and my sister who had started rowing in ’79 bugged me incessantly until I gave in and joined her in 1982.

H&L Looking back, what was the biggest obstacle for you to overcome to achieve your dream of winning Olympic Gold?

Silken My own confidence. Getting to that place of really knowing that I had everything I needed to really do it. It came through good training which was the last link for me, that I could do it. The support, the good physical and mental coaching all went hand in hand. The confidence came because of the evidence that I was getting better.

H&L You obviously had the support of your sister, what about your folks and friends?

Silken My family and friends have always known me to be very driven and focused. When I get focused on something it is really hard to distract me from it. They had quite a bit of confidence that I was going to get to the Olympics because they knew how determined I was.

H&L Did you ever want to quit?

Silken All the time. Rowing is immeasurably harder than it looks. It brings you to your knees – the exhaustion, the pain, the disappointment of not reaching your goal, and sometimes it’s year after year. Probably everyday I had a fleeting moment of – “why am I doing this?”

Then in 1985 I had a serious back injury and there was a chance I would always be in pain. I had to decide if I wanted to work as hard as I needed to get it better, to make my back stable enough to handle the intense training it takes to win, so I considered quitting. Then again, 10 years later in 1995, I was emotionally drained from the pressure of the media and public. Most of the time I would rise above it, laugh at it and embrace it as part of what I do. That year it was a constant heaviness, it made me exhausted. The joy was gone.

H&L And you didn’t quit – so what got you through that period?

Silken I didn’t want to end that way. I would have felt really sad about the sport instead of joyful.

H&L You’ve mentioned joy a couple of times.

Silken Joyful is a word I use a lot. It’s important in my life. I want the things I do to bring me joy even if they’re hard.

H&L How did you change that feeling of quitting into winning? How did you bring the joy back?

Silken A lot of baby steps to slowly build my self-confidence up again. A key step for me was to take regular inventory of the good things in my life. 1995 was a turning point. I had made it into the World Championships and was still a bit of a mental basket case. I got really mad at myself, I was fed up and didn’t want to live in self pity anymore and said “enough already!” On the day of the final race I had to decide – it was either race to my full potential or quit. So I made the decision to race to my fullest potential, to race with reckless abandon, and won the silver medal! I had pushed through my fear really.I learned something very valuable that year – fear feeds itself and
insecurity feeds itself. It had put me into such a huge downward spiral I felt I couldn’t get out. Finally, out of sheer frustration I jumped out. I kept saying to myself, “I don’t want to feel this way anymore.”

H&L Now that’s determination. How did you feel at the end of the race?

Silken That was one of my happiest racing moments. The racing conditions were unbelievable, I was so cold I didn’t even want to get my medal. But when I came into the dock, my husband John was there, all we could do was scream. It was at that moment I knew it was over, and in the very same instant everything came back.

H&L You knew you were finished and everything came back – the fears came back?

Silken No, all the confidence came back. I could focus on the real thing again, being excellent. One of my biggest motivations in life has always been to do my best in whatever I’m doing. This experience dramatically solidified what that meant for me. Deciding to overcome my fear and giving it my all made winning happen.

H&L The accident was over 10 years ago now, when you hear someone talk about it what are your thoughts?

Silken It was such an incredible time in my life. As a society we tend to label and want to complete experiences in a single sentence. But that experience can never be a sentence it’s an amazing chapter of my life that remains to this day somewhat unexplainable.

H&L Unexplainable?

Silken The story was that Silken broke her leg and she came back. Well, I just didn’t break my leg, my muscle was shredded. I had massive skin damage, severed tendons and ligaments. There’s no rational reason why I was able to get back into that boat and win at that level. I don’t think I’ll ever duplicate the amount of focus and passion I had during that time. It’s a major example of making a choice, really going for it and making it happen.

 H&L What do you see as your biggest learning as an Olympic athlete?

Silken That it’s all in your head. That the things that limit us are in our heads. And it’s incredibly important that we address our intellect, and our fears. Our strongest places are our instincts, guts and beliefs. Our weakest places – our intellect that constantly needs to analyze everything which can make us fearful. I also learned that what’s in our head can change. We can change the way we approach things and the way we think about things.

H&L What other Silken quality would you not want to live without?

Silken My ‘unsinkable’ optimism. I’ve been blessed with good chemicals that make me happy and optimistic. I’ve also chosen to consciously cultivate that optimism by choosing what I’m exposed to. If I want to make the world a better place I have to maintain my ‘unsinkable’
optimism and I can only do that if I protect it.

H&L What has your passion changed to?

Silken Children. My two children are my greatest passion, but truly all children. I see children as an opportunity to make the world better. And as an adult and a person of influence I see it as my responsibility to use my influence to make the world better for our kids. My greatest impact today can be around the physical activity and play in kids. I know what play and sport does for children, it’s an important part of creating a child’s mental, physical and social health. Right now that’s my focus, my passion and how I use my energy.

H&L Was this a difficult transition?

Silken I was focused on being a Mom, speaking and very busy so that part wasn’t hard. The hard part was when I knew I needed to be much more intentional with my time. Rather than being responsive to an opportunity I wanted to create the opportunities. To take what I wanted – to create my life path instead of following someone else’s vision of my life path, or, some sort of random path. Since I’ve done that the quality of my life has improved enormously.

H&L What do you love to do with your children?

Silken I love the days that are completely unstructured. To wake up in the morning and ask “what would we love to do today?” and create a lovely day together that we all enjoy. It’s those times when I can truly be in the moment with them. Sometimes that can be hard especially when I’m thinking of other things but I’m learning how to get better at it.

H&L How do you keep yourself healthy?

Silken I follow the 80/20 rule. 80% of the time I eat really, really healthy – organic foods, a lot of vegetables and fish. 20% of the time I have fun. I eat potato chips, french fries and chocolate cake when I go out. I’m not an extremist and believe in moderation. I eat lightly; massive amounts of food at one time is not healthy for our bodies.

I also combine naturopathic with western medicine, they both have benefits and I believe because of this I experience exceptional health. I do physical activity almost everyday and I’m not excessive about this either. Power walking, yoga and strength training are my staples.

My whole life as an athlete was about being healthy, so now with transitioning I continue to value my health. I want to feel good all the time. I’m 40 this year and people comment about my unbelievable energy. I believe it’s because I understand what keeps me healthy and I listen to what my body is telling me about my life versus trying to cover up.

H&L What’s Silken time look like?

Silken When I don’t have the kids, a perfect Friday evening is being alone, sitting on my couch, listening to music and staring off into the yard, not doing anything, I like my own company. I don’t watch TV at all. I’m an avid reader, so reading, listening to music, puttering around, that’s my kind of perfect time, the way for me to recharge.

H&L As a mother, what pearls of wisdom would you like to leave readers with?

Silken When it comes to children what goes into their bodies really does matter. The 80/20 rule can only work when they’re eating great food. Portion sizes are so big today. A cookie could have 300 calories and that’s a 1/3 of their daily calorie intake. Be aware of the calories, fat
content and chemicals in food, as well stay away from a lot of packaged foods where these things hide. We really have to ask – is half of what I’m feeding my kids packaged foods?

What we do for our children today molds them into the adults of tomorrow. I believe that healthy eating and physical activity are major components to building a happy, healthy person.

H&L Thank you for sharing your challenges, your inspirations but most of all, your passions with us Silken. I know that your passion and determination will influence and impact the changes needed to create a better quality of life for our children.