Michèle Eray still a Plett lass
Article: Ingrid Lehmensich-Botha, Knysna-Plett Herald journalist
World champion and Olympian surfski competitor Michèle Eray (34) says even though her career takes her to places all over the world, Plettenberg Bay is still her hometown.
Eray, who won the Ocean Racing World Championships for Senior Women (singles) in Portugal on July 12, recalls that her career in surfski took off at a young age when she was a Nipper (junior life-saver) at Plett Surf Life Saving Club and a learner at Oakhill School in Knysna.
As she moved from the junior to the senior division, she had to learn to paddle a surfski. With the help of her brother, Laurent and some friends, including the late Springbok canoeist, Daniel Conradie who died of a heart-attack in 1998 at the age of 28, she started paddling. Little did the young girl know that she would one day grow up to become a surfski world champion and compete in the Olympics of 2008!
Eray, who has experienced many triumphs in her career, says winning the Ocean Racing World Championship this year was a great honour, especially because it was the first official world championship of its kind.
Qualifying for the 2008 Olympics was, of course, another big highlight for Eray. She says she will never forget the moment when she heard that her team qualified for the Olympics. “I felt ecstatic to be reaching a life-long dream. We worked so hard for it. It was really, really great to know that all our hard work had paid off.”
She recalls that qualifying was incredibly difficult, harder than the Games itself. “Trying to get sponsors and support in a country like Beijing that doesn’t really understand or recognise Olympic sports, was tough.” The training itself was “brutal”, she says. Coping with up to four training sessions per day as well as being so far from home in a non-English speaking country were not easy for her. Yet, she says, the actual event made up for everything. Her team finished 7th in the K4 500m race. “I felt elated to have been in the final and that close to a medal; to have accomplished something not many people would ever get to do.”
Eray uses a Nelo surfski which is manufactured in Portugal “because it is the fastest surfski in the world. It is really well-made and even though it is manufactured by one of the biggest factories in the world, they make time for each individual paddler’s needs.”
When asked how surfski compares with surfboarding, she says it is pretty different. “Surfski is more physical, especially when it comes to balancing. But, to learn to balance on a surfski is probably a lot quicker than to learn to stand up on a surfboard. When you are going ‘downwind’ you are actually surfing the back of runs, not the front of waves like in surfing.” The name ‘surfski’ can be confusing, she says, which is why people sometimes refer to it as ‘ocean-ski’.
Eray says that even though there have been times when she feared for her life, like the time when she was training for a Berg River canoe pre-race and became trapped against a tree where she thought she would drown, or having to deal with huge waves, she finds the sport incredibly safe. “I fear the South African roads more.” Despite her close call at the Berg River event in 2011, she managed to finish first of the women in the four-day event. The sprightly athlete says that although has been very happy living in America for the last few years, working for the USA Canoeing Federation as its high performance manager, Plett will always be home to her and she looks forward to be visiting her folks during the coming Christmas holidays.
Source: Knysna-Plett Herald