Q&A EMILY OVERHOLT
What drives you to compete?
As an athlete, there are definitely times when it’s hard to stay motivated, but thinking about your end goal — and for swimmers that’s definitely the Olympics, that’s the biggest meet there is — thinking about that, instead of thinking about how much you don’t want to go to practice or whatever it is, that really helps to motivate you and makes all the little decisions along the way really easy.
You gained a lot of attention during the Pan Am Games when you were disqualified for an illegal turn. How much time do you spend working on turns and underwater work?
After Pan Ams, we did turns every single day. Going into world championship, I wanted to make sure all my turns were legal and they were all safe and fast, obviously. So, we did that every single day. After the summer, we were doing a lot of turns and starts because that is definitely an area I need to work on.
A lot of people in Canada were paying more attention to swimming last year than in the past, because the Pan Am Games were in Toronto and Canadian athletes, yourself included, did really well. How is the competition at Pan Ams compared to what you will face at the Olympics?
It’s definitely a different field. The United States is going to send a really good team to the Olympics. Some of their best swimmers weren’t at Pan Ams, so it will be different. It will be really competitive because every country will step up for the Olympics, but I think Canadian swimming is doing really well and everyone is stepping up their game, as well. We’ll be in the mix and we’ll see what happens.
Obviously you guys have to be super fit as swimmers. Do you have any guilty pleasures?
Guilty pleasures, I have quite a few. Ice cream, Ben & Jerry’s is my favourite. I spend probably too much time on Netflix. And chocolate cheesecake, all that stuff. I have a bit of a sweet tooth.