Ehrhardt eyes Olympic first for Canadian women
Triple jump representation
TORONTO — The black rubber floor in Caroline Ehrhardt’s home gym is lovingly worn. Every scuff in her “Shred Shed” is a memory.
When Ehrhardt and her fiance Taylor Stewart bought their London, Ont., home last year, and built a gym in their shed, the flooring they laid came from Ehrhardt’s childhood home.
Ehrhardt’s dad Klaus had built his athletic daughter a triple jump pit in their big backyard in Espanola, Ont., and it’s where she’d spend up to three hours most nights from Grade 8 through Grade 12. He ordered the 30-metre runway online from the U.S. He dug the pit with a Bobcat.
And so when Klaus died of a heart attack last summer, two days after Ehrhardt won her sixth Canadian triple jump title — her seventh came last month in Ottawa — she pulled up that old runway to lay as the floor of their gym.
The 26-year-old will jump at the NACAC championships this weekend in Toronto to end one of the toughest seasons of her career. Training has always been her “happy place,” where she’d found solace first from losing her mom Judy to breast cancer in elementary school, and then her dad last summer.
But she’s been battling severe patellar tendinitis in one knee. And her dad’s no longer here to help see her through it.
“Not only is (training) the place where I feel closest to my dad, where I feel like I can forget about the stress of my life, but when my injury was at its worst and I thought my season was done, that is something I thought about all the time, I was like ‘Oh my gosh, if I think this is bad . . . I have been through hell, I can get through this no problem.’
“That is I guess the silver lining of all of this. I don’t want to jinx it but I don’t think there’s a whole lot life can throw my way that would truly break my spirit,” she said. “Because I’ve made it through just about the worst thing anyone can ever really experience.”
Ehrhardt joined a track club in Sudbury in Grade 5, three weeks before her mom’s death.
“(My parents) wanted to put me in something that I could immerse myself in and kind of stay happy and keep setting goals,” Ehrhardt said. “It was good timing for sure to get involved with the sport, for both my dad and I.”
Last week, Ehrhardt matched her best jump of 13.83 metres, although it was slightly windaided. Vickie Croley, who splits Ehrhardt’s coaching duties with Frank Erle, said practices indicate a jump near the Canadian record — Tabia Charles set the mark in 2010 — is within reach.
No woman has ever represented Canada at the Olympics in triple jump. Ehrhardt would love to be the first.
I don’t think there’s a whole lot life can throw my way that would truly break my spirit.”
Caroline Ehrhardt