Talented but green
Can Canada bring home medals in swimming?
TORONTO — If Ben Titley could play god for just a day, there’s something he wouldn’t mind doing: Reshuffling the Olympic cycles.
Because right now, the career arcs of many Canada’s best swimmers don’t align with the Summer Games of next month (Rio de Janeiro) or 2020 (Tokyo). The arcs harmonize better with 2018 and 2022, Winter Games years.
“We have a very, very young team. And that’s not making excuses, it’s just reality,” Titley, the head coach of Canada’s Brazil-bound swimming squad, said Monday on the pool deck of the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre.
Canadian swimming is undergoing a rebuild of sorts and, although Titley won’t tip his hand on the topic of the program’s official medal expectations — “it’s not really something we talk about,” he said — what happens at the Rio pool Aug. 6-16 probably won’t result in much hardware for the red and white.
“Medals are going to very, very difficult to come by at these Olympics,” Titley said of the 10-men, 20-women group. “We’re focusing more on our performances … the future is very, very bright.”
In other words, don’t expect a massive splash from this version of Team Canada. One medal, two medals, three medals — one of those scenarios is likely to play out at Olympics Aquatics Stadium.
Good stories, on the other hand, will be in abundance. And, thanks to the beauty of swimming ’s inherent volatility, you can never truly count out any swimmer or any team, even when the stakes are sky high.
Fewer than a quarter of the team has appeared in an Olympic event. Only two — veteran distance swimmer Ryan Cochrane and open water marathon swimmer Richard Weinberger — can call themselves Olympic medallists.
“We have some of the best in the world at their age groups,” said Cochrane, the team’s co-captain with 26-year-old Martha McCabe. “It’s not a far step from that to an Olympic podium. It would be great if we could win multiple medals, but if we could have 30 out of 30 kids in a final, that’s a very good progression.”
And while the keen eye will be fixated on the youngsters, including a pair of 16-year-olds — rising star Penny Oleksiak, who holds an under-18 world record in the women’s 100-metre freestyle event, and Taylor Ruck — there’s a bit of irony in play as the crew prepares flies to Brazil on Friday.
You could make a case for male sprinter Santo Condorelli, as well as four women — Oleksiak (100m free, 100m butterfly, 200m free), Brittany MacLean (200m free, 400m free, 800m free), Hilary Caldwell (200m backstroke) and Chantal van Landeghem (50m free, 100m free) — being in contention for a medal or two.
But Cochrane, already a silver and bronze medallist in the men’s 1,500m free, is probably Canada’s best bet for a podium finish.
A grizzled vet in the swimming world at 27, Cochrane qualified for the 1,500m free again as well as the 400m free. Cochrane picked up bronze medals in both events at last year’s world championships and has posted promising times in 2016.
“He’s not going in as if this is the cherry on the sundae,” said Ryan Mallette, Cochrane’s personal coach. “He’s going in wanting a little bit more than he’s ever done. I think he’s capable of it.”
Ranked seventh in the world in the 1,500m free, the 6-foot-3 Victoria native should be in the conversation.
“If I put together a race I’m really proud of and know I couldn’t have done any better but I could seventh or eighth, it might take a little time but (eventually) I’ll be pretty satisfied with that,” Cochrane said of his pre- Games mentality. “Obviously I want to medal but, as an older athlete, I’ve now realized a lot of things are out of your control.”
This will be Cochrane’s first time diving into an Olympic pool without Randy Bennett, his coach of 13 years, guiding him through the pressure-filled scene. Bennett died last April after battle with cancer.
Bennett’s legacy lives on through Cochrane, who had this to say about putting it all on the line next month.
“This is our chance. It shouldn’t really be all about the Olympics. But it is. It’s all about how you do every four years.”
The beauty of swimming.