Tommy Gossland never got ahead of himself, even on the cusp of qualifying for the Olympics.
He went into last week’s Canadian Olympic Swimming Trials in Montreal “cautiously optimistic,” he said. And the day of his big race, the 100-metre freestyle, he made it through preliminaries in fourth, the placing he would need to make Team Canada as part of the 4x100m free relay.
“I didn’t ever, for a second, think that I had a race in the bag. I think that’s what had got me to that point and that’s what was going to get me to the next level,” Gossland said.
The time in between heats and finals was seven hours, the longest seven hours of Gossland’s life. His heart drummed at 200 beats a minute the entire time, and attempts at sleep were futile.
“I just lay there wide awake. I’ve never been so nervous in my life,” he said.
The only thing he could do to keep his focus was go over his race plan, over and over. He knows the 100m free inside and out, front to back. As a senior with the UBC Thunderbirds, he’d competed in the race more than ever this season. He’d studied underwater video footage and analyzed his biomechanics. He had a race plan to cover any eventuality.
“I played it out a few ways and I didn’t see one way where I wasn’t going to touch the wall and make the team,” he said.
He touched the wall fourth in 49.98 seconds. The scoreclock told him that instantly, but there was a brief wait as the meet mathematicians calculated whether Canada’s top four swimmers had gone fast enough, as a group, to qualify for the Olympics. They had.
“It was a complete flood of emotions…” said Gossland. “You’re just dreaming about this moment and then it actually happens, and it plays out the way you want it to. It’s just completely priceless.”
It was the realization of a goal that Gossland hadn’t even dared to dream when he was a young swimmer with the Nanaimo White Rapids. He remembers an awards night with the club when his coach Jenny Duncan mentioned that she wouldn’t be surprised if Gossland swam in the Olympics one day. He remembers being uncomfortable, then, to hear those words. “Yeah, right,” he thought.
But he sped up. He went from the Rapids to the Nanaimo Riptides, then on to Canadian Interuniversity Sport. It occurred to him this year, that as a senior, there was no excuse not to win. And he didn’t lose. He piled up gold medals at the Canada West, then CIS championships, and Olympic trials came at the perfect time.
Gossland recalls the outset of this swim season, when he found himself reflecting on his future. If the year didn’t go well, he might have been done with the competitive side of the sport.
Instead, he’s an Olympian-in-training, with an intensive meet schedule this summer. It’s great, he said, because he never really wanted to climb out of the pool.
“No matter what the outcome last weekend, I just had a lot of fun with the process of it and just enjoying it every day,” he said. “I think whether I made the team or not, I would still wake up the next day and want to go swimming.”
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