Abbotsford’s Lucie Romeo is now one step closer to her Olympic dream.
The William A. Fraser Middle School student was named as one of 30 athletes awarded funding in the RBC Training Ground program.
The program gives young Canadian athletes – no matter what sport or activity they are involved in – the chance to test their strength, speed, power and endurance in front of officials from Olympic sports. The program is designed to find and then provide newly discovered talent with the high performance sport resources it needs to achieve their podium dreams.
Romeo, 14, has played rugby for years with the Fraser Falcons and the Abbotsford Rugby Football Club. Thanks to the program she will now get the opportunity to train with Rugby Canada’s national team.
In 2019 close to 2,000 athletes between the ages of 14 and 25 participated in 30 local RBC Training Ground events. Top performers at local events were then invited to do sport specific testing were flown to Calgary for the talent search’s final leg. At the final the athletes completed strength, endurance, power and speed benchmark testing to measure the raw abilities required to excel on the Olympic stage for Canada.
Of the 100 athletes at the final, only the top 30 were awarded funding.
Romeo also recently received an invitation to join the BC Elite 7s rugby team that will be competing at the World School Sevens event in New Zealand on Dec. 13 and 14.
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The funding, which can be used in the coming years for things like coaching, transportation, travel, equipment and nutrition, varies for each individual athlete and is administered by the participating national sport organization bringing the athlete into its system. The funding is provided by RBC.
The complete list of 30 athletes identified and funded through the 2019 RBC Training Ground program is available at rbctrainingground.ca.
