SETTING SIGHTS ON RIO
With the Games less than 100 days away, we speak with some B.C. athletes about their hopes and dreams
With less than 100 days until the Rio Olympics, The Province spoke with six B.C. athletes about their hopes for this summer, including a 2012 medallist returning for another go, teenagers who will represent their country before they’re old enough to order a beer at home, and one athlete hoping the next two months go well enough for her to make her Olympic debut after five decades of competition. Each member of this disparate group — whether a student, a full-time athlete, or a shopping mall employee — hopes for the same thing: the chance to proudly wear the Maple Leaf in Brazil this summer, to compete, to win.
Swimming
Banners hanging high on the walls above the pool deck of UBC’s Aquatic Centre bear the names of swimmers affiliated with the school who represented Canada at the Olympics over the decades, in Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, Athens, Beijing, London.
Minutes after a gruelling pool session Monday, 18-year-old Emily Overholt sat on a bench, looked up at the banners and said: “Since I started swimming here, I’ve always had my eye on those banners. I always wanted to have my name on one of those.” Soon, she will. Overholt, who graduated last year from West Vancouver’s Collingwood Secondary, qualified last month for a spot on Canada’s Olympic swim team. She will be joined in Brazil by another highly touted young UBC recruit, Markus Thormeyer, also 18.
Thormeyer, a 6-foot-5 Delta native with a 2.03-metre wingspan, remembers watching the London Games on TV. The medal-winning performances from B.C. swimmers Brent Hayden and Ryan Cochrane, he said, were “inspiring.”
“It’s really a cliche, but I was like: ‘I can see myself doing that,’ ” Thormeyer said. “But I didn’t think it would be happening in four years.”
One name appears on every banner on the walls of the UBC pool: coach Tom Johnson, who had travelled to four Summer Olympics before Overholt and Thormeyer were born.
Johnson, heading to his ninth Summer Olympics in Rio, said both Overholt and Thormeyer are “good people,” adding: “That’s always what I look for, first and foremost. From there, you can develop them into the athletes their potential says they could be.”
Equestrian
About half a century after Joni Lynn Peters started competing in her sport, she hopes to make her Olympic debut this summer.
Peters, who learned to ride a horse “before I could walk” growing up on a ranch near Fraser Lake, west of Prince George, now lives in the North Okanagan community of Armstrong, far from the Lower Mainland hub of high-level equestrian competition.
“It’s a bit of a unique situation for me ... Some of the other people are riding sponsored horses, and have an entourage,” she said. “I’m my own trainer, and my own owner, and my own sponsor.”
Last Christmas, Peters’ friend started an online crowdfunding effort to help her chase her Olympic dream. The GoFundMe page raised $11,750 from 101 donors, a response Peters called “empowering, if not overwhelming.”
With that support, Peters travelled to qualifying competitions in California this year, finishing as the top Canadian in three of four events. Now, if she and her horse Travolta perform well enough at next month’s competitions in Calgary and Langley, she hopes they’ll be able to book a spot on the Canadian equestrian team, to be announced July 14.
Peters, now 53, started riding competitively at age six, she said, and narrowly missed qualifying for the London Olympics in 2012.
“Doesn’t every young girl want to go to the Olympics?” she asked. “Since finding this horse, it’s made the dream a little more excitingly possible. While I’ve got this top horse, I don’t want to sit home and wonder, I want to give it my best shot.”
“I’m my own trainer, and my own owner, and my own sponsor.” — 53-year-old equestrian hopeful Joni Lynn Peters
Paralympic swimming
Nathan Clement got his first taste of competitive swimming for the West Vancouver Secondary Highlanders, where he was “one of the first para swimmers in B.C. high school sports,” according to the Canadian Paralympic Committee.
Since suffering a stroke as a twoyear-old, Clement has had dystonia, a condition affecting his ability to use his left limbs. When he swims the butterfly stroke, he uses only his right arm and right leg.
Using one arm, Clement competed in regional high school swim meets against what he called “the ablebodied side.”
“In those moments, especially starting out in the sport, it’s always going to be tough, because you’re still growing, and always getting beaten,” said Clement, now 21.
“But there’s always that fuel in you, that athlete, that competitive side, saying: ‘I don’t want to be last today.’”
Clement, who won a bronze in the 50-metre butterfly at last summer’s ParaPan-American Games in Toronto, expects to race in the 50m butterfly and 50m freestyle in the Rio Paralympics.
“It’s any kid’s dream to make the Paralympic or Olympic team,” he said. “The moment I got into swimming, you always dream of making that goal, but you have to take small steps after small steps.”
Rugby
The Canadian Women’s rugby sevens team earned a berth for Rio a year ago. But the individual athletes won’t know for sure if they’ll play for the first-ever Canadian Olympic rugby team until mid-July, when Rugby Canada announces the 12-player roster for Rio.
The team will be selected from 26 women, who hail from across the country and now live and train fulltime on Vancouver Island.
“Everyone’s vying for that spot, so it will be tough,” said scrum half Kayla Moleschi. But regardless of who gets a plane ticket, she said, the whole 26-person program helps move the country toward their Rio goal, which is no less than a gold medal.
“We’re not selling ourselves short: That final is where we want to be,” she said. “All 26 of us, that’s what we’re working toward ... Everyone together as a team, that’s how we’re going to do it.”
Moleschi, 25, learned to throw a spin pass in her hometown of Williams Lake, where rugby season runs for a few months each summer and lasting “until whenever the snow fell ... usually late October, and you’re playing in flurries until the season ends.”
Moleschi grew up playing hockey and baseball, but after playing her first rugby game in Grade 9 at Columneetza Secondary, she said, she “instantly fell in love.”
“I love the ruthlessness of the sport,” she said. “I love the contact. In baseball, you can’t hit people.”
Soccer
Four years ago, the Canadian women’s soccer team entered the London Games coming off a disappointing and winless World Cup, with little hope for success, let alone an Olympic medal.
“I mean, anything’s possible in sports,” said midfielder Sophie Schmidt this week, thinking back to the lead-up to the London Olympics. “We said we wanted to be on the podium, and I think you halfbelieved it, but it was more of a feeling of wanting to believe it.”
But the 2012 Olympic tournament turned into the most memorable Canadian international soccer performance in recent memory. In a bracing semifinal clash against the rival U.S. team, Canada lost a late second-half lead amid a series of controversial calls, and eventually lost in overtime. But the resilient Canadians came back three days later in the consolation final to beat a strong French team and earn a bronze medal.
Though the semifinal loss to the Americans was “heart-crushing,” Schmidt said, “it was just a pleasure to be a part of that experience.”
“Canada lifted us up and carried us through that bronze-medal game, and that whole experience was so special I don’t think I would change it,” said Schmidt, a 27-yearold Abbotsford native.
But this summer, Schmidt said, “We have the potential to do something special,” she said. “We have the right team in place, and I’m excited to see what we’re able to do.”