© University of Rochester 1996-2012
Dominic Seiterle ’05S (MBA) seems to take winning a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics in stride.
“I went with what I expected of myself, and what was expected of me,” says Seiterle, who lives in Victoria, British Columbia.
But that unassuming demeanor cloaks the drive that took Seiterle through cancer and a life-threatening infection to the 2008 Canadian national rowing team. In August, he and seven other rowers on the men’s eight team took the gold, beating out Great Britain and the United States.
“We did train the hardest; we did have the most mental focus; we did have one of the better coaches in the world,” Seiterle says of his teammates. “Anything less than a gold was going to be a disappointment.”
A competitive rower since high school, Seiterle was the captain of the rowing team at Dartmouth College in 1997 when he set his sights on Canada’s 2000 Olympic team. Just after rowing in the Nation’s Cup Regatta in Milan, Italy, he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. He underwent a thyroidectomy, followed by radioactive iodine treatments to destroy remaining cancer cells. The experience helped give Seiterle, then 23 years old, a new perspective from which to view life.
“You can’t control things that happen to you, but you can control how you respond to them,” he says, noting that the outlook applies even to the mistakes he might make when taking a stroke with an oar.
“You can’t change the past,” he says. “You can only change the next one.”
No more than three weeks after surgery, Seiterle was back on the water. He rowed for Canada in the men’s double scull in the 2000 Olympics. After finishing a disappointing 13th in the two-man competition, he returned to training, setting out for the Olympics again.
Seiterle enrolled in the Simon School in 2002 and continued training, often rowing alone on the Genesee River and the Erie Canal. Ron Schmidt, the Joseph and Janice Willett Distinguished Scholar, remembers the self-discipline and focus his student showed in the classroom.
“There was a confidence in him, a willingness to do what is necessary,” Schmidt says. At the same time, Seiterle lacked the affectation that could’ve come with his athletic achievements.
“Dominic was not about himself,” Schmidt says. “My guess is, if a stranger sits down, he could talk to Dom for a half hour without learning about that medal.”
Some of those miles Seiterle rowed for others. In the summer 2003, he rowed roughly 81 miles across Lake Ontario to raise money for the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center at the Medical Center and for Camp Trillium, a Canadian support center for children suffering from cancer. Seiterle then took a year off from his studies, heading to Victoria to train for the 2004 Olympics. During tryouts for the Canadian team, a deadly blood infection knocked him out of the running.
Seiterle recovered and returned to Simon to complete his education. After graduating, he married and took a job in communications for British Columbia’s provincial government. He continued to train on his own until he joined Canada’s national team, where he practiced as many as four times a day, six days a week during the year before the Olympics. His bosses allowed him to work only a few hours a week, but the schedule was still grueling, even for someone in top shape.
“I can probably count on one hand how many weeks during the past I was not thinking at every practice, ‘Am I going to make it through this?’” he says.
Seiterle’s son was born while his father was at a qualifying heat at the 2007 world rowing championships in Munich, Germany. During the month before the Olympics, he focused only on training.
Then, on that glorious day in Beijing, the Canadian men crossed that last finish line. How did Seiterle feel?
“It was 50 percent excitement and 50 percent relief,” he says. “I did make a good choice when I decided to come back to rowing.”
Mike Costanza ’89 (MA) is a Rochester-based freelance writer.
© University of Rochester 1996-2012