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<< Previous   of   Next >> Michael O'Leary/ The Herald  (click to enlarge) Ursula James of Lake Stevens took up rowing just four years ago and already has won a national championship.   ADVERTISEMENT   CONTACT THE HERALD Report scores and results to 425-339-3470 or 1-866-6-SCORES (Call after 4:30 p.m.) E-mail information including items for Tuesday's Communities Sports Roundup and Thursday's Outdoor Calendar, to sports@heraldnet.com Kevin Brown, Sports Editor kbrown@heraldnet.com   Published: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 Elite rower finds herself without a country By Rich Myhre Herald Writer LAKE STEVENS -- Like a lot of athletes in Olympic sports, Ursula James has a dream. She sees herself standing on a podium, a medal around her neck, watching with pride and emotion as her nation's flag is raised. It's a wonderful dream, but one that won't happen this year. Because for the time being, James is an athlete without a country. The 28-year-old James, who lives in Lake Stevens, is a native of South Africa. She came to the United States four years ago and has since married an American, giving her permanent resident status. She also began rowing and is already good enough that she might have made either the American or the South African Olympic teams for next month's Beijing Games. Instead, she ended up on neither. James (whose first name is properly pronounced UR-shu-la) cannot represent the United States because she is not a citizen. There is a three-year waiting period to start the application process for citizenship, which began after her 2006 marriage to David James, so the earliest she could become a U.S. citizen is probably 2010. She also cannot row for South Africa because -- and this is almost hard to believe -- she is white. James visited South Africa last year and went with her father to meet with the coach of the national rowing team. In the aftermath of apartheid, which was South Africa's national policy of segregation until 1994, the country has instituted rigid quotas for most of its athletic teams, James said. Generally speaking, those teams must be 50 percent white, 50 percent black. During her visit, she was told "that they already have their quota of white athletes (on the rowing team)," she said. It was, she went on, a disheartening experience. "I feel," she said, "like a stranger in my own country and I feel like a stranger here." She consoles herself by turning her attentions, and her dreams, to the 2012 Olympics in London. "I'm training," she said, "with London in mind." James came to the United States early in 2004 to be an au pair for a family on Seattle's Queen Anne Hill. That fall, when the children went off to school, she would occasionally go to nearby Green Lake. There she got her first glimpse of rowing. The sport intrigued her and she was soon rowing herself. And because of her background as a track athlete and triathlete in South Africa, she took to her new sport quickly. James eventually moved to Everett and then to Lake Stevens, and she soon joined the Lake Stevens Rowing Club. Early last year, she also began training with Carlos Dinares, the head coach of Seattle's Pocock High Performance Center and a prominent rowing coach. Because most top rowers have grown up in the sport, Dinares was initially dubious about working with an adult novice. He was still unconvinced the first time he watched her on the water because, he said, "everything she was doing was wrong." "But after working with her for a month, I saw that she had been learning really, really fast," Dinares added. "She understood really well what I was telling her and was processing the information really fast. The things I would tell other people that they would learn in a month, she would learn in a week." James then went to Spain for three months of training and it was there, Dinares said, "she made a huge breakthrough." Last month, James rowed at the USRowing National Championships at Lake Mercer in West Windsor, N.J., where she won the single sculls, a 2,000-meter race, in 7 minutes, 40.89 seconds. The event was missing some of the Olympic-bound U.S. athletes -- including Michelle Guerette of Cambridge, Mass., who will row the single sculls in Beijing -- but it was still a good test and a good experience. And now, Dinares said, "our goal is that she can make the 2012 (Olympic) team." Her success has been something of a surprise, even to James herself. "For me to have won nationals this year was a huge shock," she said, "because I am so new." Her accomplishments also have given her something more. After her year of being an au pair, James began to wonder why she was still staying in Seattle. "I really missed going home," she said. "All I wanted to do was go back to South Africa. I really had no reason to be here. But then when I started rowing, it gave me a purpose. It's been really great for me. "And now I'm really enjoying it here," said James, who works part-time at a fitness club and does freelance work in graphic design, which she studied in college. In her idle moments, James still savors the dream of rowing in the Olympics -- and rowing well enough to stand on the podium. If that should happen, she expects the flag to be raised in her honor to be an American flag. "I love South Africa," she said. "In South Africa I have my heritage and my roots. That's where I came from. But to see the American flag (from the podium) would mean a greater sense of accomplishment because this route is so much harder. It's harder to go through all the steps, to go through all the processing, and to try to make it in this country that is essentially not your own. "To be there for America, and not being an American citizen originally, would be a big honor for me," she said. "I would be able to say I was there amongst the Americans and I made it as an American."

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