Artistic swimmer-turned-rower eyes Olympics

Karlina Steiner with her silver medal won at the New Zealand Rowing Championships. Photo / Stuart Whitaker

The $60,000 cost of making it to the Olympics for artistic swimming put Karlina Steiner off pursuing her dream - but now she has turned her attention to rowing with the same ultimate goal.

The former Te Puke High School student, who has returned to the school as a staff member, recently secured her first rowing medal - silver - as part of an eight at the national rowing championships on Lake Ruataniwha in Twizel.

As an artistic swimmer, she represented New Zealand at the world championships of 2019, 2022 and 2023, but decided against pursuing her Olympic dream when she realised she would need to find $60,000, and still might not be selected for the 2024 Olympics.

“There was a lot going on, but the final straw was ‘it’s going to cost this much’ and I thought ‘I can’t pay that much to go to the Olympics and I’m not going to ask my parents to pay it because it’s not their job to fund my sport that much’. So, I pulled out. I can’t do that.”

Olympic desires

Still harbouring a strong desire to compete at Olympic level, but realising artistic swimming was not going to get her there, she looked for something new.

“My friend said come and try rowing, it’s an arms sport. So, I went and did rowing and absolutely fell in love and I thought ‘perfect, I love this anyway’ and yeah, I just stuck with it and now I’m just fully committed to that as much as I can be.”

Looking back there may have been some confusion between rowing and kayaking.

“[Rowing] is actually all legs and at first I thought ‘oh no, what have I done’, but I just love the whole thing.”

She has also not let her lack of height put her off. “I’m not tall but anything can happen, anything’s possible, so go for gold.”

Rowing to her dreams

Her rowing knowledge was very limited and she didn’t realise New Zealand had such a strong history in the sport, “which is crazy because obviously we are really good at it, I know that now”.

The medal she won at the nationals was in the intermediate women’s coxed eight in a composite team of four rowers from Tauranga and the rest from Ōamaru.

“I was so shocked, I was in disbelief.”

The Tauranga rowers had studied the crews they would be coming up against, trying to analyse how well they would do, but the combined crew only had a short time together before their first heat, and were up against it.

“I think we had about a 20-minute paddle around to try and feel each other and see how everyone moves in the boat, because everyone has a different technique at different clubs, so we tried to figure that out and the next day was race day so it was ‘oh well, we’ll give it a crack’.”

Future plans

Next season Steiner will be competing in the higher club category.

“It’s a huge step up, but if I’m going to get anywhere with it, I’m going to have to really crack down, especially with my cardio.”

At school she has a Limited Authority to Teach, so teaches in an area where specialist skills are needed – in her case, art.

“I love it. The kids are absolutely wicked. I think my favourite thing about it is creating relationships with them.

“I heavily believe ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, you don’t know what chapter you are walking into in someone’s life and so it’s amazing to see some of these kids coming to school and putting in the effort they put in.”

She has also rediscovered her own creativity.

“Through the whole synchro thing, I lost quite a lot of drive just to do anything anymore and so getting back here and teaching kids and also teaching myself while I’m teaching them has been a great driver.”

She hoped to eventually get a full teaching degree and return to Te Puke High School.