How many seconds it takes to start and finish a race.

How many milliseconds separate you and your opponent when you cross the finish line.

How many spots are up for grabs on the Australian Olympic team.

But in 2016, numbers became Bernadette Wallace’s worst enemy.

After having a melanoma removed from her neck just a month out from the Rio Olympic qualifiers, Wallace was told she’d have a 50 per cent chance of living past five years and a 30 per cent chance of living past 10.

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A year earlier, Wallace had an unassuming yet suspicious freckle removed from her neck.

Life went on as normal until a small lump appeared on the same stretch of skin and with it brought a wave of lethargy.

Doctors worked quickly to remove it, and previously consuming worry about whether she’d qualify for her maiden games was instantly replaced by fear.

The word rival went from representing her Olympic competitors to the sickly melanoma which she deep down feared had spread throughout her body.

“There were three spots available for Rio and six girls competing for three spots so it was always going to be hard for me to make it on pure numbers,” Wallace admitted.

“I was more upset about training all those years and not getting the opportunity to trial to the best of my ability.

“My neck was stitched up and had tape all over it and I just floated down the course with this 15cm scar on my neck.

“I got to sit on the start line but I couldn’t give it anything which was the most disappointing part.

“My situation at the time was pretty damn scary and I’m still scared now but I’m really lucky it didn’t spread.

“I don’t know whether that’s luck because it chooses and we managed to catch it early enough.”

The operation was deemed a success and the melanoma didn’t metastasize but doctors remained frank.

But when Wallace takes her place on the starting line in Tokyo next year, five years and a metaphorical flip of the survival odds coin will have passed.

Cancer is no match for a soon to be Olympian.

“I was prepared to take those odds on,” Wallace said.

“I was like okay well the top three go through to an A-final and I took it one as a challenge more than anything.”

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Kayaking with Ken

12 years ago, Wallace’s brother Ken made history when he became Australia’s most successful male Olympian in Beijing, winning two gold medals in the K1 500 and 1000 events.

Now his younger sister is preparing to follow in his footsteps, albeit taking a much more winding path to sports pinnacle.

Growing up on the Gold Coast instantly injects a DNA chain of waterman or women into you, meaning days not spent at school at Marymount College were spent in the various waterways of the Glitter strip.

“We were six years apart as kids so my memory of us growing up was him dragging me to go jet skiing or skating or getting on the surf ski with him,” Wallace said.

“There was always a bit of reservation but he was always like ‘no you can do it, you’ll be fine’ and so that was our relationship.

“He’s always been pretty encouraging.”

Despite forging his own career in kayaking, Ken was always right by his sister’s side, quite literally.

“He’s always ridden a bike down the course next to me when I race and he’s basically the one person I can hear during competition,” she said.

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Wallace deemed that the best way to recover would be to step away from the sport she loved.

In 2016, she moved to Canada to coach young, up and coming paddlers.

Figuring she had to practice what she preached, Wallace decided to swap kayak for the canoe which is when the Australian Paddle Team visited and noticed how well she’d taken to the sport.

The desire to compete, not coach, reignited and in 2018, Wallace booked a flight home and begun the transformation back into an elite athlete.

“I had to fabricate time,” Wallace said.

“I had to turn two years into 10 or whatever the other girls had.

“It was really hard starting back in sport because I didn’t know how much my body could cope with.

“Every time I got a sniffle of a cold or was a bit sorer than usual I’d stop.

“I had a complete lack of confidence in what my body was capable of.”

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Qualifying for Tokyo

Upon her return, Wallace relocated to South Australia to team up with her new C2 partner, Josephine Bulmer.

Earlier this year, the pair secured Australia’s first-ever female Olympic canoe quota spot when they won the C2 500 at the Oceania Canoe Sprint Championships.

Since its introduction to the Olympics in 1936, the C1 and C2 races have been male-only events, meaning Wallace and Bulmer will be the first Australians in an eager field of groundbreaking women to make Olympic history in Tokyo after the IOC announced female inclusion in 2017.

“My journey to Tokyo has been so faced paced,” Wallace said.

“I’ve been imagining I could do this and visualising what it would feel like to cross the line first (at nationals).

“I don’t think I celebrated, I remember I was just looking straight forward at the bridge at the end of the course which had the Olympic rings on it.

“I stared at those rings for around 20 seconds because I was in complete shock I’d done it and had fought the odds to get here.

“Knowing my best mate and I Josie had made it was incredible and everything happened the way we wanted it to.”

As for making history in a brand new event, Wallace believes the next

generation of canoeists may already be riding her wake.

“It’s special because it’s the first time it’s going to be there but there’s never been an Olympic pathway,” she said.

“Whenever we’re out paddling, there are kids watching saying “what’s that, what’s going on” and I really hope now they’re going to look up what a canoe is and challenge themselves.”

Tokyo dreaming

When the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games were officially postponed amid the raging COVID-19 global pandemic, the 30-year-old admits she didn’t slump into the same devastating low as her teammates.

Having waged a war with time for the past four years, an additional 365 days was no big deal.

“I was relieved a decision had finally been made because not knowing was the hardest part,” Wallace said.

“When they said we had an extra year, I was obviously excited to go this year but then you take a breath and realise not everything happens on your desired timeline.

“For me to have the best shot at the Olympics, thinking of that podium, I now get to review my season and all those things I haven’t had time to fix up, I can figure them out now.

“I basically went from a retired athlete to training again full-time and learning a new discipline, I went from sitting on my bum to kneeling for an hour which takes a fair bit of practice.

“Right now, I’m training because I enjoy it which is a blessing but I’m also slowing down and letting my body heal.”

Beyond sport

CREATIVITY has always been an outlet for Wallace.

As a kid, she considered herself the creative sibling and would spend afternoons by the pool drawing while her sister Fran trained.

“She was in the Dolphins squad so I spent my childhood by the side of a pool,” she said.

“I would draw for hours and hours and I never really stopped.”

When Ken’s career started to take off, Wallace started drawing designs which he would have printed on the side of his boat.

“You can get whatever you want on your boats so he came to me and asked me to draw up a few designs and then people started noticing and asked me to design their boats as well,” she said.

As well as holding a Bachelor of Digital Media from Griffith University, Wallace works as a support worker for former Paralympian and 2017 World para-canoe champion Jocelyn Neumueller.

“She’s someone I can relate to and talk about Olympic and sporting stuff with,” she said.

“I thoroughly enjoy my work and I don’t think being a full time athlete and not having work or other interests is mentally healthy.

“My workplace isn’t somewhere where you count down the hours for work to finish.”