Hope for high-performance athletes

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This article was published 31/05/2020 (1425 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A global pandemic denied elite Canadian athletes a shot at Olympic and Paralympic glory in 2020.

The Toyko Games have been rescheduled for next summer, but the country’s best and brightest are still awaiting word on when they can resume something approaching normal training.

To that end, the Canadian Olympic Committee hinted Monday a resumption could come soon when it announced it had earmarked $5 million to be placed in a fund dedicated to the return to competition.

“We found this money from other programs in the organization and reprioritized it to our greatest need,” said Canadian Olympic Committee CEO David Shoemaker in a conference call. “And our greatest need right now is to invest in podium potential around the return to training for high-performance athletes.”

With an emphasis on safety and testing, the money will be directed to individual sports as identified by the COC’s Return to Sport task force.

“The COVID-19 pandemic and the postponement of the Olympic and Paralympic Games has had very significant impact across sport in Canada,” said Shoemaker. “Certain national sports organizations are suffering severely from it.

“The government announced a $72-million investment that was designed in large part to make sure our sport organizations remain viable going forward. I like to think that will be the case.

“The story is not completed on COVID-19. We don’t know how this all finishes yet. We can’t be certain as we sit here today that we’ll solve the problem.”

Winnipegger Shae Fournier, a member of the national women’s water polo team that had earned a spot in Tokyo, is still playing the waiting game.

“We don’t have much of a sense (of when training will resume), because rightly so, they’re really going to err on the side of staying as safe as we can,” said Fournier from the national training base in Montreal. “For now, my team is pretty spread out all over the country. We typically train in Montreal but everyone, with the situation we’re in, we’re all at home… They don’t really want to bring us back together until it’s really worth it.”

Fournier, an attacker with the nats who recently completed her second pro season with SIS Roma in Italy, expects to have about two weeks of lead time before Team Canada eventual reforms.

An above-ground pool recently installed at the home she shares with her fiancé and a friend should alleviate some of the training concerns.

“We have a pool now in our backyard and we have a tether set up so we can swim on the spot,” said Fournier. “I love it. I’m so happy. I’m really lucky they were down for building that.”

Meanwhile, Swimming Canada released a set of regulations that will govern what training groups will look like when pools are reopened.

Only one swimmer per lane will be permitted during the early phases. That translates into smaller training groups, inflating costs for coaching and facilities.

“Our norm is to have a full training squad all in the pool at the same time,” said Swimming Canada CEO Ahmed El-Awadi. “Definitely the costs will increase in the short term.

“These funds come into play and are super-critical in kickstarting the high-performance program.”

National team swimmer Kelsey Wog hasn’t trained at the University of Manitoba pool or the Pan Am Pool since the middle of March but she’s been making the best of the situation.

“I’ve been doing some cycling, whatever I can at home with what I’ve got,” said Wog, who posted the world’s fastest 200-metre IM time earlier this year. “I’m fortunate to have a backyard pool, so that’s been coming in handy but it’s 10 metres long. It’s been challenging to train but I’ve been doing my best.”

Wog has been swimming 30 to 60 minutes per day while tethered in place, a far cry from the three or 3 1/2 hours she would normally spend in the water this time of the year.

“When you look at outdoor sports, their ability to return to sport will vary greatly to an indoor aquatic sport for example,” said Own the Podium CEO Anne Merklinger. “They’ll have more sophisticated protocols, sanitizing, cleaning methodologies required. So can’t speculate at this point in terms of what sports will have a greater financial impact.”

If conditions persist, Swimming Canada plans to host an invitational camp Aug. 25-29, bringing the top open water and pool swimmers together again. The national body also determined the dates for the ’21 Olympic trials, slotting them for April 7–11.

Eight other Manitobans had their Olympic or Paralympic dreams put on hold, including: Skylar Park (taekwondo), Desiree Scott (soccer), Misha Sweet (fencing), Tyler Mislawchuk (triathlon), Jason DeRocco (volleyball), Isabela Onyshko (gymnastics), Leanne Taylor (para-triathlon) and Carolyn Lindner (para-archery).

 

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @sawa14