Canada’s best swimmers will be chasing Olympic dreams next week, and a couple of Nanaimo athletes will dive in, too.
Mackenzie Crane and Richard Bourgeois have qualified to compete at the Canadian Olympic Trials in Toronto starting Tuesday (April 5).
Crane, 18, will swim the 800-metre freestyle while Bourgeois, 23, will swim the 100m breaststroke.
Crane’s whole season has been leading up to this, ever since the Nanaimo Riptides athlete identified this distance as one to target.
“So this entire season has all been training for the 800, swimming it at every meet,” she said.
At the Swim B.C. AAA championships at the beginning of March, she had several cracks at achieving the time standard and missed it by a second. She was able to set up a time trial a week later, and swimming against only a clock, got the time by two seconds.
“It was pretty great,” she said, to achieve a goal she had long been imagining.
It means she gets the valuable experience of Olympic trials. Crane will graduate from Nanaimo Christian School this spring and will attend the University of Sioux Falls in South Dakota in the fall. There, she will help pioneer a brand-new swim program and work toward a long-term goal of the 2020 Olympics.
“I know for sure I’m probably not going to make this team this year,” she said. “In my head, I know that, so it’s just about going out and swimming the best race I can and preparing myself, getting my pace times down and making sure I do every little thing correctly…
“I think it will be a really good experience, especially leading up for 2020, to be swimming against the best in Canada, knowing where you stand against them and how hard you’re going to have to train, how much faster you’re going to have to be in the next four years.”
The pressure won’t be different than any other major meet, she said. Crane had the opportunity to train at senior nationals last year and swim at international meets.
“It’s just knowing in your head that it’s your race; you just have to go out and swim it,” she said.
For Bourgeois, the Olympic trials have a different sort of meaning.
The member of the University of Victoria Vikes swim team graduates this spring, so he’s reaching the end of his competitive swimming career.
“I kind of always assumed this would probably be my last meet,” Bourgeois said. “Since my first year I was qualified, and always had my eye on it.”
He was fairly satisfied with his final season at UVic, as he competed at Canadian Interuniversity Sport nationals last month and broke his own school record in the 50m breast. The 100 is very different, though, he said, as it requires both front-end speed and endurance.
He has a pretty good idea of the competition he’ll be facing, and knows he doesn’t have a realistic shot at an Olympic qualifying time.
“It’d be good to get a second swim,” Bourgeois said. “They’re not easy to get; it’s the most competitive meet in Canada.”
He’d like to make the most of his last laps. He’s done a lot of them over the years, starting out with the Nanaimo White Rapids and then joining the Riptides, on to the UBC Thunderbirds, the Vikes and now ending off not far from Team Canada contention.
“It’s so hard to put in that work all the time, early mornings for years,” he said. “But I’m sure it will be a bit of a shock after, stopping swimming entirely.”
The trials will be held at Toronto’s Pan-Am Sports Complex. The men’s 100m breaststroke event is Tuesday (April 5) and the women’s 800m freestyle is April 8.
sports@nanaimobulletin.com
