WIEBE RETURNS FOR ANOTHER SHOT AT GLORY
Now believing she was only “scratching the surface” when she won Olympic wrestling gold in 2016, Erica Wiebe must overcome a big hurdle if she’s to defend her Rio Summer Games title in Tokyo.
On the upside, the 30-year-old from Stittsville should have an ample supply of hometown support when she visits Ottawa for a last-chance qualifying competition this weekend. The top two athletes from an expected field of 10 to 14 athletes in her 76-kilogram category will qualify for the Olympics in Japan.
“It will really be the first time for me ever competing in my hometown of Ottawa since I’ve become Olympic champion or even in my international career,” Wiebe said in a telephone from her training base in Calgary.
“It will be really special having friends and family, former teammates, people from my high school coming out to support and to see me compete in person. It’s an incredible honour.”
A second Summer Games spot wouldn’t have come down to this last-chance event at the Shaw Centre if Wiebe hadn’t surprisingly lost in the quarter-finals of the 2019 world wrestling championships in Kazakhstan, falling short of automatic Olympic qualification. She earned entry into the Ottawa competition by winning the Canadian team trials in Niagara Falls in December.
The full schedule of Olympic qualification for women’s and men’s freestyle wrestling and men’s Greco-Roman wrestling in Ottawa runs from Friday through Sunday at the Shaw Centre.
Wiebe was to fly into Ottawa on Wednesday, leaving a couple of days for final preparations.
If that sounds like a compressed schedule, maybe it is, but she’s a very busy woman.
Beyond wrestling training and competition, Wiebe works as a Deloitte “human capital consultant” and she’s participating in the Harvard Business School “Crossover into Business” program matching elite athletes with MBA students. After a kickoff event in Boston on Feb. 2-3, there have been regular teleconferences with academic teammates for video presentations of projects in late April.
In addition, the 2016 Olympic and 2018 Commonwealth Games champion was recently named an ambassador for sport and healthy living by the Alberta government.
“Everybody who has known me my whole life knows that everything I do is 110 per cent. I’m really intentional about what I do with my time, and I’m passionate about what I do,” Wiebe said. “I have the privilege of allowing myself to choose opportunities that I’m passionate about and make an impact on my community.
“I prioritize my training, I prioritize my physical and mental health, and I have a really supportive network of people that I work with that allow me to do what I do.” Having already worn Canadian colours in one Olympic Games and trying to secure a second in Japan in late July and early August, Wiebe appears to be at least open to the possibility of continuing to compete after that.
It’s “cool,” she says, to step back in certain moments and reflect on how things have changed, how her perspective is so different.
“I feel like I’ve opened the aperture. When I’m on the wrestling mats, I feel different things, I see different things. I just see so many more things," she said.
“I really believe that in Rio on that I was like scratching the surface of what I’m capable of as an athlete. And I’m stronger and fitter than I’ve ever been before, now in this moment of my career, and I’m becoming more technical and tactical. It’s a really cool place to be, just tapping into a different level, a new, deeper level of my own capabilities. So it’s really exciting for me. I’m healthy and I’m happy, so who knows what the future will hold.”
What’s not so happy, unfortunately, is the worry about friend and former wrestling teammate Holly Ellsworth-Clark, subject of a missing-persons search in Hamilton since mid-January.
A media-relations officer for the Hamilton Police Service said there was “no information at this time to suggest there is anything criminal in nature relating to her disappearance. Hamilton Police continue to follow up with all leads and work with the family in hopes of locating her.”
Wiebe said the massive uncertainty hit “really close to home. It puts a lens of humanity on the situation because Holly was truly just this larger-than-life personality who was just so full of love and optimism and compassion, and she was a really tough competitor, but really just kind and loving and goofy.
“She was just such a great kid. Then, of course, she retired from the sport of wrestling and pursued a music career . ... She really excelled at everything she did, and, to have this happen to her, it’s just shocking. To me, it can really happen to anyone … We don’t know what happened right now, but for me it increases the importance of checking in with the people that you love and checking in with the people in your community, making sure that the resources are always there for everybody.”
I really believe that in Rio
... I was like scratching the surface of what I’m capable of as an athlete.