On the road to the Olympics: Spotlight on West Island athletes heading to London.
Friends, families and local pools are abuzz over two West Island women who will be swimming for Canada at the upcoming Olympics.
Samantha Cheverton, a Lachine resident, and Stephanie Horner, a Beaconsfield native, both Queen of Angels High School alumni, are part of Team Canada’s 31-member swim contingent in London.
Both started competitive swimming with the Association of Lakeshore Pools, which comprises 20 summer pools and has been around more than 50 years.
Cheverton, who turns 24 next month, started swimming as a child at Dixie summer pool in Lachine.
“That’s where she started to learn to swim – her whole family did,” said Alan Cheverton, Samantha’s father.
Cheverton later joined the Dorval swim club and then, at age 14, the Pointe Claire club, which remains her current home club. The Pointe Claire club has sent 16 swimmers to previous Olympics.
At 18, Cheverton received a full swim scholarship to Ohio State University, where she graduated last year with a bachelor’s degree in psychology.
Cheverton is set to race in the 200-metre freestyle and qualified for the 4x100 free relay as well as the 4x300 free relay.
Her father said the family is excited to be heading to London and watch her compete on the world stage. “It’s the pinnacle.”
Cheverton’s rise in competitive swimming was a gradual progression to the Olympics, her father said.
“When she started swimming at Ohio State about five years ago, all of a sudden she started making the national team, like for the Pan-Pacifics and the Worlds last year,” he said. “It only dawned on her about a year or two ago that, ‘Wow, I can get to the Olympics.’ But it wasn’t like it was a goal since she was 18 years old. She swam because she loved it.”
Horner, 23, based at a swim club in British Columbia, is a Beaconsfield native who started swimming at age 9 at the Beaurepaire summer pool before joining the indoor Bluefins club. She is making somewhat of a comeback, heading into her second Olympics.
After competing in Beijing in 2008, Horner headed south to join the swim club at Auburn University in Alabama but it didn’t turn out to be a good fit for various reasons and she was also out of international competition for a short period. She came back to Canada and signed on to train with Island Swimming’s/Victoria Academy of Swimming.
Horner will compete in 4X100 individual medley. Her proud parents, brother and sister will be flying to London to encourage her.
Her mother, Danielle Felx, spoke to The Gazette on Monday. She said her daughter is happy to have made her second Olympics.
“Two times in eight years requires a lot of time sacrificed for swimming. It’s what she wanted to do.”
Chris Ragan, the for mer president at Beaurepaire pool, described Horner as a sweetheart and a great role model. “At age 12 or 13, it was clear she was a super swimmer,” he recalled.
Pointe Claire trained diver Émilie Heymans is heading to London in hopes of capturing her fourth consecutive Olympic medal before ending her sports career.
If she achieves this goal, she will become the first diver in history to win a medal at four consecutive Olympics, according to Diving Canada.
In her previous three Olympics – Sydney in 2000, Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008 – Heymans, a Belgium-born South Shore resident who has trained with the Pointe Claire Diving Club for about seven years, won a medal at each Games.
She won a silver in Sydney in synchro diving along with Anne Montminy, who also had trained with the Pointe Claire Diving Club headed by longtime coach Yihua Li.
In 2004,hey mans and partner Blythe Hartley won a bronze medal. In 2008, she collected her first Olympic 10-metre tower individual medal, edging in between two Chinese divers to capture silver.
In London, she will compete in the individual three-metre springboard event as well as the three-metre synchronized event where she is partnered with Laval’s Jennifer Abel. She switched to the springboard event from the 10-metre platform following the 2008 Games.
Heymans, who began diving when she was 11, has already announced these Olympics will be her last diving competition. She completed a university degree last year and has plans to enter the world of fashion as a designer after retiring from diving.