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Sports of The Times

Rower (and Doctor) Blows Past Failure and Zika in Drive Toward Rio

Gevvie Stone finished seventh in single sculls at the 2012 Olympics and is preparing for the Rio de Janeiro Games this summer.Credit...Erik Jacobs for The New York Times

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — On the walls of Harvard’s Weld Boathouse here on the banks of the Charles River, among the dozens of photos of women’s crews gone by, is evidence of how long Gevvie Stone has been around the sport of rowing.

Look at the black-and-white team picture of the 1984-85 Radcliffe varsity heavyweights. There, in the back row, is the coach, Lisa Stone. That’s Gevvie’s mom. She’s wearing maternity overalls.

“There I am,” Gevvie Stone said last week, pointing at her mom’s round middle, “in her belly!”

That was about 31 years ago. Of course Stone gravitated to the water. Born to parents who were top American Olympic scullers, she had a feeling she’d end up racing a boat someday. “I had an inkling I’d be good at it,” she told me.

You might say it was meant to be. You cannot say, however, that it has been simple.

To make it to the height of a sport is never easy, even for those athletes wired for greatness. That’s something to think about as teams bound for the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro come together in the next weeks and months.

What, actually, did it take to make it to the top? What did they give up? What are they willing to risk for success in Rio?

For Stone, the Olympic dream has had its stops and starts.

Six feet tall and lean, she was part of an undefeated national championship women’s eight crew at Princeton and won two world championships in under-23 competition. After graduating in 2007, she put her acceptance to the Tufts University School of Medicine on hold to train for the 2008 Olympics. For graduation, her parents even bought her a single scull, an ice-blue one with a red racing stripe, so she could fine-tune her skills in a small boat.

Those seemed to be the blueprints of a daughter whose family is legendary in the sport, at least in these parts. But there was a glitch.

Stone didn’t make the cut for the Olympic team.

“I felt like a failure,” said Gevvie, which is short for Genevra.

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While the rest of the United States women’s national team trains in New Jersey, Stone is based in Cambridge, Mass., and practices on the Charles River. She is considered a medal contender in Rio by virtue of her fourth-place finish at the world championships last year.Credit...Erik Jacobs for The New York Times

Stone nearly gave up rowing after that. To get away, she worked as a camp counselor that summer while her former teammates raced in Beijing.

But there was no getting away. One of her campers hinted that Stone, perhaps, should give the Olympics another try. She made a gift for Stone: a tiny paper boat with a tiny paper rower who held tiny paper oars. On the boat’s bow were written the words, “2012 Olympian.”

Stone’s heart skipped a beat. She took that boat home to her parents’ house in Newton, Mass., where it still sits in her old bedroom, not far from her rowing medals and the Tom Brady poster on the wall.

Was the tiny boat a tiny harbinger? Maybe. But it took her father, Gregg, to actually coax Stone back onto the water.

“I just said, ‘Let’s just go out for some rows together,’ ” Gregg Stone recalled. “She said she wanted to quit, but I knew that she just needed to find her rhythm.”

They headed onto the Charles in their single sculls. He tweaked her technique; devised ways for her to be more graceful; started crafting her workouts. It sparked something special.

With her father coaching her, Gevvie felt the boat move through the water in ways it never had before. She felt weightless, as if she were flying. It took her breath away. This, she said to herself, is why she loved the sport.

Other coaches along the Charles noticed, and marveled.

“She didn’t fit the mold the national team was looking for,” said Liz O’Leary, Radcliffe’s longtime coach, who won a bronze in double sculls with Stone’s mother at the 1977 and 1978 world championships. “But outside the system, training on her own, with her dad coaching her — there’s not many who can do what she has done.”

What has Stone done? She climbed back to the top of rowing when others would have given up. In rebuilding herself, she landed in the loneliest seat in the sport. While the rest of the United States women’s national team trains in New Jersey, Stone is based here in Cambridge, in a bubble of her own making.

In a tippy, feather-light single scull, there are no teammates to help her or motivate her. No one to blame if she falters. It’s just Gevvie, flying or foundering. Sometimes on the water in the early morning, she doesn’t see another soul. Sometimes the only sounds come from her oars turning in the oarlocks, or the blades cutting the water — or her own breath.

For several years, Stone trained while in medical school. Her rationale? Classes ended at 4, so what was she supposed to do with the rest of the day?

“Totally doable,” she said.

Her multitasking worked. She made the United States team for the 2012 London Games, where she finished seventh, and kept right on going.

Now, after having graduated from medical school in 2014, she is considered a medal contender in Rio by virtue of her fourth-place finish at the worlds last year.

Her hands are yellowed and callused from years of gripping oar handles. They’re not the delicate hands of a surgeon — but she hopes they will be. Stone, who will turn 31 in July, will apply to residencies in orthopedic surgery in September — after the Games.

Before that, it’s one last shot at an Olympic medal. But getting to the starting line in Rio is not without its complications, either. Every one of this year’s Olympians must consider the threat of one more very serious obstacle: the Zika virus.

Even though she is a doctor, Stone told me she had only had limited training in infectious diseases, especially tropical ones — and that was long before Zika became an issue. Even though she reads American Medical Association newsletters and keeps up with the Zika news, Stone — like so many other Olympians — said she was relying on the experts at the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to keep her safe.

“It’s a hard call to make because we’re all invested in this and we’re not going to make totally rational decisions,” she said.

I’ve heard the same from others headed to the Games this summer. They’ve sacrificed too much to turn back now. After all, some have spent a lifetime in and around their chosen sport — or in Stone’s case, even a few months longer than that.

It’s hard to imagine a single one, least of all one who rows a single, will let anything get in the way now.

Email: juliet@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: Doctor, and Olympian, Has Two Goals in Play. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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