Aisha “Felice” Chow- Rowing
Chow is one of the greatest stories in Rio. She had never been a competitive rower before arriving at Miami on an academic scholarship in the 1995. She was so good she was immediately promoted from novice to varsity. After graduating in 1999, Chow went on to a Ph.D program in Pharmacology and Cancer biology at Duke. That was it for rowing until 2010.
Rowing colleagues encouraged Chow to try out for the Olympics. The native Trinidadian who grew up in the capital city of Port of Spain pointed out that Trinidad and Tobago didn’t have a rowing federation. That changed in December 2015 and gave Chow a more direct path to the Olympics. She earned a in March in Chile.
After placing fifth out of five rowers in her heat, Chow had to work her way through the repechage (the U.S. Rowing Federation defines Repêchage as: Repechage: The second-chance race which ensures that everyone has two chances to advance from preliminary races since there is no seeding in the heats.”) to get another chance to advance.
Chow finished second in her the first repechage heat with a time of 8:04:91. She failed to qualify in the main heats of the semifinals. Her amazing run ended with a fourth place finish the finals of heat D. Her time of 750:23 landed her in 22nd place.
An amazing accomplishment for someone who had never competed in the Olympics before and had taken ten years off from the sport. She is also relatively new to rowing alone. She didn’t compete in single sculls until she began rowing again in 2010.