Abel takes plunge with new partner
Canadian vet ‘found the joy of diving again’ after teaming up with Citrini-Beaulieu
EDMONTON — Diver Jennifer Abel still loves to win, but she doesn’t necessarily have to win to maintain a love for her sport.
The 26-year-old from Laval, Que., was reminded of that by longtime friend and current synchro partner Melissa Citrini-Beaulieu.
“Because of her, I found the joy of diving again,” said Abel. “We went to the Commonwealth Games and she loved it so much. It was her first Games. She had stars in her eyes. I was used to it, so I was not that excited, but then I got that fire back because I was able to remember the days when I was like her, impressed with those games and the big names of the competition.”
Abel and Citrini-Beaulieu finished out of the medals in Australia last month, but Abel won the individual three-metre springboard title. She also owns synchro gold from the 2010 Commonwealth Games, Pan Am gold in the three-metre springboard from 2015 and an Olympic synchro bronze from 2012. She’s one of those big names.
“I’m so impressed all the time,” said Citrini-Beaulieu, a 22-year-old from Saint-Constant, Que. “She’s strong, she’s really elegant. I was really intimidated at the beginning, but now she’s someone I want to be like.”
Abel has carved out a fine career as a seasoned performer under pressure. But even the best in the game come up short. When Abel finished fourth in three-metre springboard and three-metre synchro with then-partner Pamela Ware at the Rio Olympics, she failed to reach her potential and had difficultly processing it.
“You know, at one point, when you always want to win and you always want to perform at your best, you forget the reason why you got there, the reason why you love the sport and you’re just focusing on not the bad things, but you lose the beauty of sport,” she said.
When Abel returned to training in the winter of 2016, she was focused only on her individual event, in part because Ware was dealing with a foot injury. But Citrini-Beaulieu was intent on changing her technique to match Abel’s and a partnership started to grow.
“Since I began with her, all my technique and my diving is totally different,” said Citrini-Beaulieu. “The way I see diving, the way I am engaged with diving is totally different. She taught me how to maintain the focus and the training all year long and to be able to compete all the time, which is a challenge for me because I was not used to doing that before. It’s a completely different story with Jennifer by my side now. It’s kind of like I have learned a new sport. She taught me how to be a high-performance athlete, basically.”
They were good friends who quickly developed chemistry, but there were still hiccups along the way.
“I know it was hard for her to be on that team by my side and have to perform right away,” said Abel. “She had a lot of pressure on her shoulders. So I told her no matter what, I will be by her side and we will win together and we will lose together. So I think what she meant is I made her realize we are a team and we’ll stick together as a team.”
They won silver at the 2017 worlds and realized it was going to work.
Eighteen months after they joined up, they are a synchronized force of nature. They picked up four medals — two silver and two bronze — and US$34,000 from the four-meet FINA World Series, which wrapped up last week in Kazan, Russia.
They will compete at the Grand Prix in Calgary this weekend. And two years from now, they are going to challenge one another to be the best they can be and still enjoy the 2020 Olympics regardless of the outcome.
“It was really painful for her to finish fourth place in Rio,” said Citrini-Beaulieu. “She had trouble with it. I really love my sport and I think that’s how I helped her because I made her realize why she was doing it, why she was diving and what we have to enjoy.”