At the end of 2023, Ana Žigić and three other brave women set out to row across the Atlantic in a human power boat.  For 39.5 days, through walls of black waves, endless seasickness and layers of salt on equipment, clothes and skin, they learned to trust and support one another as the best teammates they could be.  Motivated by their desire to “turn the tide for girls in sport”, they trained for two intense years with “life outside the row” falling to the wayside.  There She Rows achieved a British record for the fastest women’s crew to row the Atlantic, definitely a proud achievement for Ana.  But it was during the fortune of doing this with three unstoppable forces of nature that Ana found herself with lasting and transformative lessons from the ocean. (Roxanne | ws)

With Ana’s permission, Weekly Sparks is sharing her unedited story here, first published in vougueadria.com on March 4, 2024.

Picture finding your yourself in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, 1500 miles from land both in front and behind your boat. The astronauts on the international space station are closer to you than anyone on land. Your company is three other women, living in close quarters, on your 9.6 meter ocean rowing boat, powered across the ocean using only our own physical strength and mental fortitude. There is no help coming, as you have taken on this endeavour to row an ocean completely unassisted. Carrying all your provisions, desalinating your own water, taking care of each other’s wellbeing, and navigating wild waves, wildlife, storms, and everything in between as you row 3000 miles from the Canary Islands to Antigua. All you see is blue and white, the bluest blue of the ocean, extending 5km below your boat, the blue of the sky and its big fluffy white clouds, and our colour coordinated kit. You don’t know it yet, but seeing the full spectrum of colours on a supermarket shelf the day after making landfall, after 39 days 12 hours and 25 minutes of rowing, will overwhelm you so much, you’ll need to sit down until your head stops spinning.

I found myself in that very situation, a tiny dot in the of the great big blue. What I didn’t know, was how much more I would find myself out there. 

Why did I put myself in this extreme situation of competing in the World’s Toughest Row, one of the hardest physical and mental challenges in the world? Living on a tiny, human power boat, with three other highly ambitious people for close to 40 days, that I spent more time with in the last two years than my own family, is nothing short of a social experiment. Before we began the row, we agreed on a mission statement that we wrote out and signed an agreement to give every part of ourselves to achieve this collective goal: “Reach Antigua in the fastest time possible by trusting and supporting one another as the best teammates we can be.” In this process, I learned more about myself that I’d probably care to admit, and changed in ways I’d have never considered necessary had I not signed on to this challenge, which proved to be the most intense group therapy and personal growth experience in disguise. 

Let’s rewind. I’m a Serbian and Slovenian woman, who lived in three countries before I was three. We ended up settling in London, UK, through my mother’s work. I was the little sister, always copying my older brother, playing basketball, football, and tennis. I remember being offended when the basketball coach punished the boys with press ups, but I was exempt. For being a girl. Am I not part of the team? These were the early moments that I realized women and men are treated differently. I’m blessed that my mother raised me in a way that I never even recognized the harsh realities for much of my girlhood, as she bulldozed every barrier in front of me for as long as she could.

I joined my school’s rowing team, mainly because I rejected the other sports on offer due to the fact that I couldn’t understand why we had gendered sports. But rowing was for both boys and girls. We trained together. I was neither good at it,  nor liked it at first, but over time I fell in love with the sport. I found my tribe, not only in school but through every university crew, and club I have rowed for since. I became confident, improved academically, and learned core skills of teamwork, leadership, negotiation, and resilience that sport provides. What I didn’t know at this time, was that I had undiagnosed endometriosis. I knew I was in pain, lying in bed at night wishing I could remove my leg where my pain radiated, my condition hiding behind the misdiagnosis of a sports injury. The pain reached the point that I had to quit sport. My refuge, my tribe, my outlet, robbed from me. In 2017, I had my first surgery confirming endometriosis, which they excised. A month later, years after I had quit rowing, I was back in a boat. It felt amazing to feel the water under me again, to feel strength in my legs again, and to find my people again.  

I can’t stress enough how much of my life, as well as my physical and emotional wellbeing, has come from as a direct result of engaging with sport. So when in April of 2022, I was scrolling through LinkedIn and saw a post that caught my eye, it wasn’t until after I filled out and submitted the attached form that I really understood what I had just committed to. The post was by Victoria Monk, my soon to be Atlantic row captain. She was looking for a crew of three other women to row an ocean, to serve as an inspiration to the next generation of girls in sport. To use the platform of the row as an opportunity to draw awareness to barriers to girls in sport, the huge drop out rate of girls in sport in their youth, and why sport matters to future success. Here is where my journey with the team, There She Rows, began. It soon included Eleanor Reynolds and Abbey Platten and the “fifth member” our boat, Sarabi.

The intense two year campaign was not without its sacrifices, and life outside the row fell by the wayside, and besides we also had to go from four complete strangers, to a coherent team that could communicate in complete silence. As the row’s start date drew closer, we prepared for every eventuality; system failures, Blue Marlin attacks that could leave a hole in the boat, medical emergencies, team tensions, and everything in between. But I would soon learn that the biggest lessons would come out on the ocean.

We pushed off from land on December 13th 2023, and wouldn’t see land again for another 39 days. We would celebrate Christmas, New Year’s, and Abbey’s birthday in the middle of the ocean. For the first three days and nights we had no moon, the big sea, and a whole lot of seasickness. All the fresh food we had been advised by past rowers to take with us, mostly donuts, went overboard as a snack for the birds that were following us as not one of us was able to keep down even a morsel of food. We adjusted to the new reality, as walls of black waves would block out our view of the Milky Way in front of us as they crashed over us, and salt encrusted our equipment, clothes and skin, forever damp, leading to our skin falling off in pieces. 

We normalised our reality quickly, failing to appreciate how unusual what we were doing actually was to the outside world. We had momentary reminders of this, when a super yacht, came to visit us 25 days into the row after spotting us on their navigation system. Unexpected tears tumbled down our cheeks as new faces came into view for the first time in 25 days. We hadn’t realised how much we would crave a break in the endless blue around us, to see strangers, and hear new voices. They hauled a giant speaker onto their deck and blared out Eye Of The Tiger, and took footage of us to send back home as we hadn’t been able to since the start of the crossing because we broke our satellite internet device. The magnetite of the moment, and the reality that we often taken other’s company for granted dawned on us once the yacht pulled away again and disappeared over the horizon. Once again it was just the four of us, on out tiny boat, in the middle of the ocean with only the sounds of our oars sweeping through the water and waves crashing around us. 

One of my biggest fears ahead of the row, was to get into the water to clean the barnacles off the boat’s hull. I couldn’t help but remind myself that I was entering a habitat that was not my own. I had to put my trust in my teammates to watch my back for anything lurking in that deep blue. But through that faith, I overcame this fear and jumped in with both feet. Daily, we put this level of trust in each other, to look out for one and other. Often, someone else would notice you were crashing before you realized it yourself. Faltering on the boat for any reason was incredibly emotionally challenging. One night I had suspected food poisoning, and whilst curled on deck in the middle of the night, I had to weakly knock on the cabin door to wake up Viki and ask her to sacrifice her own rest to row in my place. It wasn’t until I  had the opportunity to do the same for Abbey later in the race, when she was dealing with a back injury, that I learned to let go of my self-imposed guilt. I realised how it takes strength to recognise your limits and take rest so you can show up better on your next shift. That my team would do anything for me, as I would for them, without judgement. I finally began to understand the stoics, and even what I had learned about positive psychology during my Masters in Sport Business and Leadership in theory, but failed previously to put into practice. A lot of it fell down to emotional reactivity, and how we react to situations, in particular those that we have no control over. 

I think it is fair to say that I have historically been a reactive person. Act, then think. I resisted meditation and mindfulness practices, believing that my anxious brain could never attain them. The row taught me patience that had alluded me all my life. It taught me to bide my time, and pick my battles. It taught me how frivolous most grievances truly were, and where they were valid, to make a choice if it was worth airing these, or letting them go in the interest of the collective goal. I was forced to pick myself apart in ways I had always resisted. I’ve been practicing self-reflection for years, choosing to do so as part of my further education, but also actively engaging in therapy for many years now. However, I think we all have that part of us that is filed away behind a multi-level security system, with a big red button at the front saying “DO NOT PRESS.” Well, the row and my team came along and hit that button with two fists, forcing myself to face myself fully and completely for the first time. I have learned to better advocate for myself and others, I have learned to be introspective in ways I had previously resisted, and how true leadership looks like by watching our one-of-a-kind captain, Viki. To have rowed across the Atlantic, with Viki, Ellie, and Abbey, feels like to have touched the sun. Crossing the line, achieving our mission statement, and achieving a British record of the fastest women’s crews to row the Atlantic will forever be one of my proudest achievements. But it is the fortune I had to be connected with these three unstoppable forces of nature in a way so few people will ever experience, will be my proudest achievement of all.  

I hope our story serves to inspire the next generation of girls to stay involved in, and enjoy all the benefits of sport. And that society must uphold and champion girls everywhere by recognizing and dismantling the societal and practical barriers to women’s sport. That we will see women’s sport all over the media, and little girls lacing up their football boots on community pitches worldwide in this lifetime. 

I hope that all girls everywhere can row their own ocean, whatever that might look like, and build a team around them to learn from and grow, so that they may touch the sun for themselves.  

Ana Žigić | guest contributor | ws

Ana Žigić is a graduate of Bristol University with a Masters in Sport Management from Loughborough. Born in Vienna, she is a Serbian and Slovenian national who lived in 3 countries before the age of three, which is where her wanderlust might have come from. While training for the row, she took a weekend off to get married but the honeymoon has had to wait. Ana currently resides in London and is employed at Wasserman, as Manager, Consulting.

All images from @worldstoughestrow