Young local athletes get a chance stand out to the Olympic Comittee

“We run a number of tests, share that information with our partner sports in the hope of finding some Olympians. We’re really looking for potential,” Andrew Latham, with the Canadian Sport Institute Pacific said

“We’re looking at is fluidity. As an athlete, ability to test well, speed, endurance, all of these tests that they’re going to be doing today,” Jake Thiel, former rugby Olympian adds. “We’re just looking to see who kind of stands out, which I’m sure they will.”

And they do. Caleb Poitras is doing the training for the second time and has already caught the attention of the luge team.

“Last year went really good. I think I did really good in my testing in the first round. So I made it to the qualifiers and past qualifiers. Got invited to Calgary to go with Luge Canada. See the facilities, test it out. Luge Canada liked what they saw, so they sent me to the national finals in Toronto,” he said.

The program has already found 13 Olympians and seven Canadian Olympic medalists — and these new athletes hope to follow that same path.

“I just thought it’d be a cool experience to see how far I’ve become as an athlete and see where the spots I can improve,” Lily Dekkers, who was part of the training for the first time explained. “Hockey is my main sport. I’ve been playing for 10years […] So I just want to see where I can improve. So maybe I could end up on one of these international or provincial teams.”

But the main point all athletes should take out of this is that sports are meant to be fun.

“The reason we all start playing sport is to have fun. So that fun element needs to be important, but it can be fun, and it can be competitive. Pushing yourself as far as you can, it does have a certain amount of fun involved with it,” Latham explained.

And they all got the message.

“Just come here to have fun. Don’t worry about your results. Just come here to make new friends and see where everyone’s from and what kind of different sports they do,” Dekkers said.

“It’s a really cool experience. The athletes you meet here are really cool and you get a lot of learning from them. So just take it all in,” Poitras added.

And even if you don’t get picked now, there is always another opportunity.

“That’s the good thing with sport – maybe you don’t always do your best performance, but there’s always another opportunity. So we hope what they [athletes] take from today is that there’s no limit to their potential. And our hope is that, if they don’t make it this time, they’ll come back next year and keep working and put themselves in a better position in 12 months’ time,” Latham said.

by Silvia Senna

Young local athletes get a chance stand out to the Olympic Comittee

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