Cochrane sets tone for young Canadian team
RIO DE JANEIRO— The agony of onehundredth of a second.
For purposes of comparison, the average human being requires onethird of a second to blink.
So, way less than a wink is all that separated Ryan Cochrane — this country’s most decorated Aquaman, Canadian male swimmer of the year from 2008 to 2015 — from the men’s 400-metre freestyle final four years ago in London, and even then only because Beijing gold medallist Park Tae-hwan of South Korea had his disqualification overturned.
Four hundred metres is Cochrane’s minor. He majors in the 1,500 free.
But, despite connecting silver in the 1,500, duplicating his result from Beijing, that non-inclusion for the 400 still nags.
“I missed the final in the 400 in the last Olympics,” the 27-year-old from Victoria reminded on Wednesday as he looked forward to the first day of Olympic competition on Saturday. “I’m taking it step by step, really excited to actually get racing. Step 1 is qualifying for that 400 final on the first morning.”
Cochrane, with silver and bronze on his Olympics resume, is co-captain of a 28-member swim team that includes the youngest male Canadian athlete in Rio — 16-year-old Javier Acevedo — and has a median age of 22. Twenty-four of them are Olympic rookies. All look up to Cochrane as the inspirational leader. He’s been on the podium; he’s been excruciat- ingly knocked off the starting blocks. If not for his bronze in Beijing, Canada would have been a no-show on the swimming medal log for the second Games in a row after being shut out in Athens. After the poor glory of the ’80s from Alex Baumann and Victor Davis, blanking had become an embarrassment.
In Rio, as chef de mission Curt Harnett stated yesterday, Canada has pegged its medal prospects across the board at 19. Some have certainly been earmarked as emerging from the pool. Two medals and seven finals in events leading up to Rio makes that more than wishful thinking, with Canadians contesting in five relays and many individual races.
“There’s definitely some added pressures,” Cochrane concedes, and as co-captain his responsibilities for preparing teammates extends beyond the swimming lanes. “For my- self, that pool is exciting. It’s a bowl stadium (that seats 15,000) so everyone is kind of close to the pool. With that many people watching, it’s going to be really loud.’’
And he adds, because a great many fans who might tune into sports only for the Olympics might not actually appreciate this fact: “The Olympics is hard. There’s hundreds of people that vie for these spots. These are the best in the world. Anything can happen at the Olympics, both good and bad.’’
The proof, especially in swimming, is that so few world records are set at the Games. “It’s more of a placings scenario, once you actually get in the water,” Cochrane explains, with the U.S. and Australia the traditional swimming powerhouses.
“I think we have the most chances I’ve seen in recent memory in the pool to win medals. There’s way more people vying for those medals than I’ve seen, especially if you look back 10 or 20 years. Our younger athletes are here to better their performances.”
Further, the whole squad benefitted from swimming for a homecountry audience at the Pan Am Games in Toronto last summer. “We’ve got that extra experience. That’s motivation we’ll take into here.’’
It’s just about everybody into the pool come Saturday, with half-a-dozen events on tap and, for the Canadians, the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay most keenly anticipated. “With Ryan and the women’s relay, we’re ready to get going right out of the gate,” says Brittany MacLean, who took a second off her own Canadian record in the 400-metre freestyle at the Olympic trials earlier this year. “It’s a big day for us.”