National team duo inspired for worlds
OTTAWA — How does one keep 274 preteen and teen girls quiet and sitting in place for four minutes?
Simple. Turn up the music and let them see their heroes up close.
Karine Thomas and Stéphanie Leclair played the role of heroes Friday, performing duet and team routines during a break in the Canadian espoir synchronized swimming championships at the Nepean Sportsplex pool, but the Gatineau natives now with the Montreal-based national team knew what the young competitors were thinking because they once had similar thoughts.
Their spark came from a show in Montreal before the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Thomas, now 24, remembers how national team members cascaded into the water to start the routine.
“Wow! That’s something really special going on there,” she recalled Friday.
“It was almost disbelief. It was so amazing to me that I just couldn’t comprehend it.”
Her hero was Fanny Létourneau, a duet and team competitor in world championships and the 2000 and 2004 Olympics and a 1999 Pan-Am Games gold medallist with Claire Carver-Dias.
Leclair, now 23, had the impact of that Montreal showcase reinforced some years later when national team member Jessica Chase visited the Outaouais Synchro Club.
“She talked to me,” Leclair said. “She took the time to make me understand what it was.”
There was also some of that Friday, before, between and after six total performances by Thomas and Leclair, solo competitor Chloé Isaac and other national team members who were brought to Ottawa for the day.
Beside being a break from the normal training routine in Montreal, Friday gave them an opportunity to road-test routines they’ll perform during an international competition next week in Brazil and during the world aquatics championships at Barcelona this summer.
They conducted a similar exhibition during junior (ages 16 and up) and senior nationals at Quebec City in April.
Each was an opportunity for feedback from observers and judges, particularly those with international experience.
“We think we have a pretty good idea of what we need to work on, but having it either confirmed by judges or by hearing different opinions is always a good thing,” said Thomas, who, like Leclair, will be going to her third world aquatics championships.
It’s the biggest show in the pool after the Olympics, with swimming, open water swimming, diving and water polo also on the schedule between July 19 and Aug. 4. There’s also more synchro than usual, with preliminaries and finals for the technical and free routines.
That means Thomas and Leclair, named Canada’s duet pair in March, can expect to be in the water for competition at least once daily for eight consecutive days.
Most events use the technical component as preliminaries for free swim finals.
After Barcelona, really not all that far off, the Rio de Janeiro Olympics loom.
Last September, after she and Thomas competed with the squad that finished fourth in team synchro in the London Games and still basking in her first Olympic experience, Leclair wasn’t sure she wanted to stay in synchro through 2016. Now she does. “Rio is coming very fast,” she said. Right now, I’m planning to go to the Olympics, but you never know.”
Thomas’ goals also include Rio 2016, but she’ll go year by year, factoring in how she performs and how her body holds up.
“I don’t want to make any promises in a certain way because it’s just so uncertain,” Thomas said. “Obviously, I have been dreaming about it. I will work toward it, but you never know.”
Life in general must also be considered. However, next week and this summer, synchro is the priority, and goals and expectations are high. “The performance is what counts,” Thomas said. “We want to have a near to perfect or perfect performance, and what comes with that is the (medal) podium.”