“I’m happy with what I did and I’m grateful to my body for letting me do it. And let’s do it still. In fact, if you look at the results so far, the feeling is amazing. I never expected that I could break Jelena Prokopchuk‘s records,” the 20-year-old athlete summarizes her first Olympic cycle. “I’ve also learned a lot of different lessons. Moving from youth competition to adults is a completely different reality. I was really aware of that at the Olympic Games. To be able to compete there and break through, you have to change your training plans, you have to change the method and the type of training.”
The woman from Valmierie has already managed to break the Latvian record in the 3000-meter race held by the great Jeļena Prokopčukas, and in 2023 she was recognized as the best athlete in Latvia. Looking at the top female athletes in the world, Agate Caune admires their ability to switch gears.
“It is clear that the results they are getting are fantastic. What is more important to me is how they can move and change speed during the race. We often see that the first three kilometers are done very slowly. You literally feel that they will stop immediately, but then there is an explosion in the last two kilometers,” says Caune. “It makes me think about how they can do it and what I should do in training so that I can also run smoothly and increase the speed quickly. Until now, I have always said that I have to run away and try to keep the advantage at a distance, but in every game there will not be such an opportunity. You have to be able to run tactically, you have to be able to change pace.”
Here’s how Caune has run away in his two biggest starts to date. At the 2023 World Championship, she ran several hundred meters ahead of her competitors in the preliminaries and, thanks to that, she was able to enter the final. On the other hand, at the Olympic Games in Paris, the woman from Valmiera was at the head of the large group for a long time in the preliminaries, however, when her competitors increased the pace, she had to fall back quickly.
“The sound, the atmosphere and the range. It gives such an adrenaline rush… This was a completely new experience for me as well, how to prepare for a race. It was like I had warmed up, but then I had to cool down for half an hour. The starting waiting rooms are literally a narrow corridor. You are there with other athletes, but you have to find a way to move to keep yourself warm. I think I went to the beginning already cooled down. There were so many conditioners, so long wait. My muscles weren’t ready to run yet. It took them a while to warm up again,” Caune recalls of his Olympic debut. “Otherwise, I enjoyed every minute of running, the whole process. I didn’t even expect to be at the Olympic Games.”
The athlete does not deny that she had been thinking for a long time due to the health problems she suffered during the Olympic year that she could not participate take in Paris. She admits that true confidence in her ability to participate only appeared in the final training sessions before she boarded the plane. “With that injury at the start of the season, with the rehabilitation process, it’s been quite a roller coaster. While I was there, I was happy and proud of my body that was able to recover. Of course, there was still a long way to the best level and the best result, but it was an honor just to be able to go to the starting line, to feel the experience, seeing what needs to be improved. The most important thing is that I could run without pain.”
Caune remembers that she was only 19 years old at the time of the Paris Games, so she saw them as gaining experience. “It was valuable to feel firsthand what the event is about. It’s one thing to listen to what other people say, but when you go there yourself, you feel a completely different perspective. It is a very big feeling and it is not that easy. A lot of attention from the media, who ask different questions, including provocative ones: how do you run? Yes, I can tell the expected place and time, but the reality can be different. In the end, I am the one going through what I said, not someone else. You have to work on yourself psychologically. Go there and see athletes next to you, that you have seen on TV or followed on Instagram. It can leave a different impression. It gives you more adrenaline and a boost on the treadmill, but it can be just the opposite – it can create a feeling of dread. “
As reported, after the Paris Olympic Games, Caune stopped working with his long-time coach Raivi Ravinski and started working with Ugis Joci.
Full interview with last year’s best athlete in Latvia read Sports newspapers in the October issue!
2024-10-24 16:58:00
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