A trio of Redmond-area athletes will compete on the world’s biggest stage starting Saturday at the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Morghan King will begin her weightlifting journey in the 48 kg (106 pounds) division on Saturday.
Rob Munn, Hans Struzyna and their men’s 8 rowing teammates will splash into action on Monday.
After only three and a half years in her sport, King, 30, will be one of three women representing Team USA in Rio.
Despite the short amount of time she has been competing, she has already made her mark. Since she started weightlifting, King said she has been to every international competition, including three world championships, two Pan-American Championships, a China Grand Prix and the Pan Am Games.
“When I started weightlifting I wanted to be top five in the nation for 53K class,” King told the Reporter in May about her early goals in the sport. “After I continued to do well and make more international teams, I realized that the Olympics were truly attainable.”
King discovered weightlifting through CrossFit. She said while training for CrossFit, she wanted to get stronger and was introduced to weightlifting at the end of 2012, saying she “fell in love with the perfection of the sport.”
“Whatever Morghan did, she put her heart and soul into it,” said her mother Anita Jefferson about King’s fast advancement in the sport.
Struzyna, 27, enjoys the team dynamic of rowing the most. Both he and Munn got into the sport as teens with the Sammamish Rowing Association (SRA) and both competed at the University of Washington.
“In rowing, you either all win or you all lose,” Struzyna told the Reporter in June. “To me, it’s having a plan and executing what you practice. You only get this short period of time. If you blink, it’s gone.”
It was always one race at a time and climbing to the next level for Struzyna. He never had Olympic aspirations at the start, but as he got closer to Rio, he couldn’t help but get excited for what’s to come.
Munn, a 2008 Redmond High graduate, likes not knowing what’s going to happen in a race. He just keeps rowing and hopefully it will land his team in a good spot at the finish. In June, Munn told the Reporter that it hadn’t hit him yet, but he knew that soon he’d think, “Holy cow, I’m going to the Olympics!”
The 25-year-old was drawn toward the team aspect of the sport and the SRA culture. The key to his success was striving to get better each time he hit the water, he said.
In the so-called “Regatta of Death” Olympic-qualifier in Lucerne, Switzerland on May 24, the United States, Poland and Italy challenged each other from start to finish, but it was the United States crew that flew past the Polish team in the last 100 meters to notch the victory at the Rotsee race course.
The United States won in 5:29.16, Poland was second in 5:29.62 and Italy took third in 5:29.98. The top two punched their tickets to Rio.
“We decided to call it the ‘Regatta of Life.’ We survived, we get to live on,” said Struzyna. “It’s a pain contest, who can outlast the guy next to them. We said, ‘This is it,’ and put in one final push. Somehow, you have to find a way to do it.”
