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As the clock zipped past midnight, Olivia Coffey was in job mode when the thought of taking a shot at her third Olympic team wrestled the focus away from her computer screen.
Work could wait that night, there was unfinished business to contemplate for the Burdett resident, who was an alternate for the 2016 Rio Olympics and left the 2021 Tokyo Olympics frustrated after the U.S. women's eight rowing team she was part of came up shy of a medal with a fourth-place finish.
As Coffey thought more about it, she asked herself why not do it?
"Just so I can sit and do more Excel?" she recalled of the back and forth that went through her mind. "Excel will always be there, jobs will always be there, so I would hate to feel like I had the ability to do it and not do it. I would rather try, not make it, and be like, 'OK, that book has closed, I made the right choice,' than never try and feel like I gave up, pursued this goal for so long to win an Olympic medal and the possibility is still there, but I decided, no, I need the six months to keep working."
Coffey, 35, ultimately decided to return to training full time, a choice that was validated when she was one of the 12 athletes selected to fill the spots on the women's eight and women's four at the Paris Olympics, which will be held July 26 to Aug. 11. Still to be decided is which boat, though Coffey said she'll be happy with whichever she ends up on.
She was told March 24 she made the cut, after three weeks competing in the Olympic Selection Camp at Nathan Benderson Park in Sarasota, Florida, and six months of intensive training. Coffey said to herself, 'Oh my God, I did it,' when she received the good news. While out and about in nearby Watkins Glen in the days just after, many shared her excitement.
"The Olympics are really cool and the Tokyo Olympics, I walked away like that’s not representative of the effort I’ve put in for a decade, it just wasn't," Coffey said. "Now I can answer that question, show me your best. Now I can do that. ... I just really want an Olympic medal and I want it to be gold, too."
A great deal of effort and much stress
Coffey, who works remotely for a New York City-based private equity company, received universal encouragement from co-workers and family as she weighed the pros and cons of taking another shot at the Olympics.
The jump from contemplative to committed took time.
Coffey returned to working out regularly in the winter of 2022-23 and went through some erg tests, which measure speed and power among other things, that provided encouraging results not too far off from when she was training full time. She trained more regularly in the spring before deciding last summer to go full-speed ahead. Coffey increased her training load from five to six times a week to 14 or 15, adding it took time to readjust to the volume required of an Olympic-level athlete.
The Harvard University graduate went from training full time at the USRowing Training Center in Princeton, New Jersey, in the fall to rowing in a two-person pair in January in Sarasota. After competing in the Winter Speed Order in February in Sarasota ‒ a requirement for consideration to the Olympic Selection Camp ‒ Coffey sent along her physiology scores and was one of 19 women chosen for the camp.
There were plenty of nervous moments for Coffey, who hadn't competed since Tokyo. She was getting seat-raced every day as a top-12 was decided.
"I think it was an uncomfortable position to be in because before I feel like I was kind of at the top in the Tokyo cycle or towards the top and this time I was trying to fight my way into the group, so I had to beat everybody who had been on the team that I was kind of taking the place of," Coffey said.
"So it was really hard, it was super stressful. And with a seat race you don’t know how it’s going to go because you can only control one variable and how you impact the people around you really has a difference on how the boat goes overall. I was getting seat raced up until the last day and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I might not do it.’ "
It is a unique dynamic competing against friends for a spot in the Olympics, but the competitive side of Coffey takes over when rowing.
"I’ll always be great friends with a lot of the people I train with because rowers are generally really good people, but when you’re on the water I’m absolutely going to try and destroy you," Coffey said.
Seeking 'best race possible' in Paris
Paris offers a chance at a full-fledged Olympic experience for Coffey after she was an alternate in Rio and spectators were extremely limited in Tokyo, with the impact of COVID creating other restrictions and distractions beyond crowds. Coffey said it was weird crossing the finish line and seeing nobody there as she looked to either side. Her family, including husband Michael Blomquist, watched her compete on TV from the United States.
"Even now just hearing my family make plans to come watch the race, I’m thinking they might be able to watch me race at the Olympics and how much of a different experience that would be," said Coffey, whose dad, Calvin, won an Olympic silver medal in rowing at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.
The possibility of giving the family another medal has Coffey excited after she was part of a U.S. women's eight that didn't medal after the United States won the three previous Olympic titles in the event.
With a new coach and new high-performance director since Tokyo, Coffey said the team's training program is producing faster speeds on the water. There is also more experience, led by 41-year-old Ithaca College graduate Meghan Musnicki.
"The thing about Tokyo is I think over half the boat, it was their first senior team and it was the Olympics. So I think that was hard because we didn’t have enough races under our belt," Coffey said.
"I really like the group I'm training with. They're really nice people, the coaches are nice, the high-performance director is a really nice guy. It makes it fun to train."
The team will train in Princeton, New Jersey, leading up to Paris, with a World Cup event in Lucerne, Switzerland, on the calendar in May. The makeup of the eight and four teams will be announced no later than early June. Olympic rowing will run from July 27 to Aug. 4 at Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium, about eight miles from Disneyland Paris.
As she talked about the opportunity, Coffey had yet to find out the venue for rowing, adding it wasn't something she wanted to think about until she made the team. Last time she competed in France, Coffey won a world championship.
Los Angeles will host the 2028 Olympics. Whether Paris is the swan song for Coffee remains to be seen, though she certainly plans to compete like it's her final race.
"I just want to go out on a performance I’m really proud of because I walked away from rowing not being happy with what I had done, even though I had so much success building up to Tokyo," Coffey said. "I just want to put down my best race possible and if it wins, it wins and I’ll be so happy. But if it doesn’t win, but I feel like it was the best performance I have, I feel like I could still walk away from the sport really happy."
Follow Andrew Legare on Twitter: @SGAndrewLegare. You can also reach him at alegare@gannett.com. To get unlimited access to the latest news, please subscribe or activate your digital account today