Super League’s skateboarding couple see positives in Olympic postponement

Richard Murray and Rachel Klamer admitted that the one-year Olympic postponement has probably worked in their favour.

The Super League couple, who recently got married, have differing reasons to see the positives in the Tokyo Games moving to 2021.

For Rachel it means not being away for long periods of time with her mother being ill. For Richard it is a chance to build up further fitness after a long struggle with a tendon problem.

Speaking to the Power Up Show, Rachel said:

We were not surprised they postponed the Olympics. If you look at all the things happening in the world you wouldn’t be able to have the Olympics now.

I am probably the last person who will complain or be sad or disappointed about it because my mum is sick and at the start of the year I was thinking ‘how am I going to do this later in the year and with training camps? I don’t want to be away for months.’

Now I am at home and going training and I don’t have to worry about the amount of training I am doing, if it’s hard or not or whether I do an altitude camp. The fact it gives me another year is probably a good thing for me.

I would have wanted to race this year as we had a lot of nice plans for next year which we will have to postpone or cancel so that’s a little bit sad but it gives us time for other things.
Although a lot of people are stuck inside it brings people together.

Richard added:

Definitely I think some unfinished business towards Tokyo and after the injury last year things are slowly getting better.

In hindsight it is not bad the Olympics got put out by a year and athletes are doing whatever they can in the situation.

For now Richard and Rachel are busy training together, enjoying married life – and even skateboarding.

Rachel said:

I think it’s good that we are not racing each other but in training I really like racing him, which I obviously don’t win but I like chasing him down and that’s a good thing to do.

We have done a couple of other things. We are cleaning up the house and we have been doing some skating, which we are clearly doing wrong.

It was my first time on a board which I had since I don’t even remember. I played on it at six-years-old and my parents told me they would throw it away now as I wouldn’t use it. I said I would so went out but it didn’t last very long.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

29 yo and learning ✔️. Day 1 and @rd_murray broke 1 board. Feel free to donate a new one 😂

A post shared by Rachel Klamer (@rachelklamer) on

Richard smiled:

As our coach said I train on the easy side and she trains on the hard side so it actually ends up working well for both of us.

I think in general we have a good balance on life and sport. We do train together so we spend a lot of time together and it is like we are on continual lockdown but we have a good balance.

Next time I won’t go skateboarding after eating a big dinner! I broke the board. I did a little bit of skateboarding when I was a skater boy as a kid and built corner pikes and rails. I really enjoyed skateboarding and broke my ankles a couple of times and thought it would be fun to show Rachel how to break something, but thankfully she didn’t.

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