Posted Sunday, August 8, 2004; 11.13BST
Violetta Peters was born for the whitewater. The daughter of three-time world champion German kayaker Wolfgang Peters, she grew up in a home where a paddle was cherished, not feared. In July 1994, aged 16, she went to watch a World Cup event in Augsburg, Germany. She no doubt hoped to pick up a few tips from the athletes there, but the real purpose of the trip was to scope out a guy she had a crush on, a talented young Austrian kayaker named Helmut Oblinger. The two were introduced and fell instantly in love.
They married in 1999 and today, "we do everything together," says Helmut. "We're like a team." Four hours a day, you'll find Team Oblinger paddling furiously along the River Inn, which glides past their garden in Schärding, Austria. Their destination is Athens, and what they seek is something that wasn't on the wedding list: a pair of Olympic medals that would cement their status as whitewater's First Couple.
Marriage has been good for the Oblingers' sporting fortunes. Violetta, now 26, is in the world's Top 5. Helmut, 31, won a world title in 2001. But the closest either has come to an Olympic medal was in Sydney, where she placed 15th in her event and he came a frustrating fourth in his. At moments like those, Helmut says, having a spouse in the sport helps. "Someone not involved could never understand," he says. "We tend to talk about frustration a lot," adds Violetta. "We go on and on and on about it. I don't think I could go through all that on my own."
"All that" means more than just the agony of defeat. The Oblingers lack the support and endorsements that successful Austrian winter sportsmen enjoy. So the two are each other's most reliable sports psychologists, travel agents, managers and salespeople, scraping together sponsorship to buy boats (each needs four or five a season, at €1,500 a pop) and training time on slalom courses (up to €440 an hour).
They hope the training will pay off in Athens, on the élite circuit's only seawater course. The salt stings racers' eyes and makes paddles slippery. The steep course falls away quickly, punctuated with drops with names like Margaritaville (the pumped-in seawater is lime green) and marked by 20-odd gates. Touch one, and rack up penalties. "Make one small mistake and it's over," says Violetta, an underdog in a strong women's field led by Czech two-time defending champion Stepanka Hilgertova. Helmut will have to beat French hotshot Fabien Lefèvre, who is already a two-time world champion at age 22, and Briton Campbell Walsh.
Helmut wants to keep racing through 2008, but some days, his wife isn't sure she even wants to be doing this next year. Success in Athens would make it easier to paddle away from the sport, but Violetta wonders if it would be a waste to do so. "We can only do the sport at this level now," she says. But it's also hard to ignore another clock that's ticking in her mind. "We both really want to have children." Whatever comes next, they're sure of one thing: they'll tackle it together. "There's a saying in German: 'There's a lid for every pot,'" says Violetta's dad, Wolfgang. "I'd say that fits Helmut and Violetta perfectly." And the pot seems just the right size for two Olympic medals.
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