Katie Zaferes is too young to be a Tom Petty fan. Still, the classic rock-n-roller could have been singing straight to the 26-year-old when he wrote the lyrics, “The waiting is the hardest part.”
For the elite triathlete, the past nine days have been more agonizing than the choppiest swim, the windiest bike ride, the most lung-burning run. Zaferes, a Seascape resident, had been checking her phone nearly every one of the roughly 13,000 minutes since she competed in her last Olympic-qualifying race in Japan. She was waiting for the call informing her she had been selected to the USA Triathlon women’s team that will compete in the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this August.
At 4:30 p.m. Monday, that call finally came.
“Relief,” Zaferes said of her initial emotion. “I felt like I deserved the spot. Waiting for it made me kind of second-guess. But when I was told that I got the spot, but not only that I got the spot but that I was also going to race on my own, I was happy.”
Zaferes, who raced as Katie Hursey until she married Santa Cruz native and fellow pro triathlete Tommy Zaferes in January 2015, has been on the brink of qualifying since last August.
In USA Triathlon’s first qualifier, a test event held on the Olympic course in Rio on Aug. 5, she finished sixth. That would have been enough to claim one of the United States’ three spots in the Games if she hadn’t also finished behind two other Americans — 2012 Olympic qualifiers Sarah True (nee Groff) and Gwen Jorgensen, who swiped the two automatic bids. Zaferes then refocused on USA Triathlon’s subsequent qualifier: the ITU World Triathlon in Yokohama, Japan, which was held May 14.
There, a top-three finish would have automatically secured her spot on the Olympic team, but she made a tactical error — “It was my mistake,” she said — and finished in sixth, a mere 10 seconds off the podium.
That’s when the long wait began.
“A lot of people were frustrated in how long it was taking,” Zaferes said. “For me, if I would have auto-qualified and gotten on the podium, I wouldn’t have to wait. I think I put more of the responsibility on myself.”
USA Triathlon, according to its bylaws, had to convene a four-person committee to decide who would fill the final spot on the women’s team. That committee, in turn, had to be approved by another committee before it could meet. Once it met, it was not required to announce its decision until mid-June.
Among the issues the committee had to consider was whether it would be more beneficial for Team USA to select a domestique — a racer who serves the team interests over her own — or a medal contender. Zaferes fit squarely into the latter category, but she knew the committee could decide to take one of the young up-and-comers in a strategic move to get the Americans to the podium after they were shut out in London in 2012.
Yet Andy Schmitz, the high performance general manager for USA Triathlon, said once the committee looked at the field, there really wasn’t any discussion.
“She is heads and tails above her peers who hadn’t qualified,” Schmitz said. “The committee didn’t pick her, she picked herself by virtue of her strong performances.”
Last season, Zaferes, a relative newcomer to the sport, combined with Jorgensen and True to nab two-thirds of the women’s ITU medals. That including winning six of her own to finish ranked fifth in the world. This season, she’s currently 10th in the world and third among Americans behind Jorgensen and Kristen Kasper.
Schmitz said he spoke with Zaferes nearly every other day during the selection process, and he was the one who phoned her with the good news.
“I certainly understand the anxiety she would have waiting,” he said, “but she handled herself in a professional manner. She was as calm, cool and collected as she could be.
“She certainly showed a lot of joy in receiving the news.”
Zaferes won’t spend the rest of the summer waiting for the Olympics to arrive. She plans to join Tommy Zaferes in the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon in San Francisco on June 12 before heading to Europe for a training camp and World Triathlon Series competitions in Stockholm (July 2) as well as Hamburg, Germany (July 16). She said she expects to fly to Rio on Aug. 15. The women’s triathlon is scheduled for Aug. 20 — two days before the closing ceremonies.
Whew, the wait is over. The Olympics will be here before Zaferes knows it.
“I’m mildly overwhelmed,” she confessed, “but in a good way.”
Contact Julie Jag at 831-706-3257.