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NS Olympic hopefuls get ready for the Games

February 21, 2012

Little is certain when it comes to Nova Scotians’ participation in this summer’s Olympic Games in London. Just ask Antigonish’s Eric Gillis.

Gillis, living and training in Guelph, Ont., enters the Olympic year as one of Nova Scotia’s best bets to wear Canadian colours. The 2008 Olympian in the 10,000 metres is one of two Canadians to meet the qualifying standard to run the men’s marathon.

But Gillis’s situation is a bit precarious — not enough to dampen his enthusiasm for a romp through the streets of London on Aug. 12, the final day of Olympic competition, but enough for him to keep an eye on his Canadian rivals.

The 31-year-old Gillis, a husband and father who ran his first marathon in 2010, cracked the standard in Toronto last October, sprinting to the finish line in 2:11:28 to better the Olympic requirement by one second. Only training partner Reid Coolsaet did better.

Canada can send three men’s marathoners to England. If two runners pass Gillis in the coming months, and several will try, he would be pushed into a spring marathon to try to reclaim his position.

But one of his main pursuers, Simon Bairu of Regina, was unable to better the time in Houston in January and plans to turn his attention to the 10,000 metres. Bairu’s miss virtually clinched a second Olympics for Gillis.

“I feel like I learned a lot at my first Olympics,” says Gillis, a former St. Francis Xavier athlete. “It was a real eye-opener being at that level of competition. There’s so much hype.

“I’ll have a stronger mentality and feel more like I’m meant to be there. Even though I’m not 100 per cent qualified yet, I feel like the past four years has been preparation for another trip. It definitely means a lot for me to get there again and compete well and achieve my goals.”

Only one Nova Scotia athlete is certain to be on Team Canada for the Olympics. Sailor Danielle Dube, 24, qualified as Canada’s lone entrant in the laser radial class in Florida in late January.

“I think it’s kind of slow-burning excitement,” Dube said after a recent training session in Florida, where she will spend much of the colder winter months.

“I don’t really know at this point what I’m getting into, but it’s exciting.”

Nearly 20 other Bluenose athletes, including nine paddlers, are seeking passage to England.

Andrew Russell, Richard Dalton, Genevieve Orton, Karen Furneaux, Ben Russell, Una Lounder, Mark de Jonge, Ryan Cochrane and Connor Taras are the leading contenders in canoe-kayak.

Track athletes Adrienne Power and Jenna Martin, gymnasts Hugh Smith and Ellie Black, judokas Whitney Lohnes and Amy Cotton, swimmer David Sharp and boxers Brody Blair and Custio Clayton are also prospects. Two-time Blue Nose Marathon champion Greg Wieczorek will try to qualify in the 10,000 metres.

The 32-year-old Dalton, a competitor at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, would seem a lock for London. But appearances can be deceiving.

He won gold in the C-1 200 metres at the Pan Am Games in Mexico in October. The result qualified Canada — but not him — for the Olympics.

“In May and June, we will have three sets of trials to choose who will race for Canada,” Dalton says. “It is an open trials, and the first person to win twice gets it. The first race will be in Atlanta in May, then the other two races will be at World Cups in Europe later in May and into June.”

Dalton will spend most of the winter in Florida training for the first qualifier.

“Competing in London would be a career highlight for me,” he says. “For the past two seasons I have done some of the best training and racing of my career, and I’m eager to have a chance to showcase what I can do on the Olympic stage.

“Also I was born in Cork, Ireland, which is just over the Irish Sea from London, so to have a shot at racing the biggest event so close to where my family is from would be very special.”

De Jonge, 27, has qualified a K-1 200 boat for Canada, but, like Dalton, must earn the right to crew it. De Jonge was sixth in the event at the world championships last year.

“The Olympics is the pinnacle of achievement in my sport, and competing at the Olympics is something I’ve always dreamed of, even before I started kayaking,” de Jonge said.

Andrew Russell, 29, is nearing the end of his career and would see London as a grand exit from the sport. He finished fifth and sixth in two events in 2008 in Beijing.

His path is the same as Dalton’s — training camp in Florida, the national team trials in Georgia, and with a good result, the World Cup events.

“The Olympics is the ultimate dream,” says Russell, who started paddling on Lake Banook at age five.

“The C-1 200 is a new challenge for me this year and I am excited to really challenge myself. I would love to close out my sprint canoeing career with a second Olympic berth. It would be a fantastic way to finalize a really great ride.”

Orton, 27, is gunning for the lone available spot in K-1 200.

“To me, racing at the Olympics would mean accomplishing a goal I have been working toward for over 12 years and been dreaming of since I learned what the Olympics were.”

The 35-year-old Furneaux is a different case. The three-time Olympian and nine-time world medallist is back after taking two years off following the 2009 world championships at Lake Banook.

“It hasn’t been without its struggles,” Furneaux says. “With age comes some injury … but I’m happy to say I’m very healthy now and looking forward to starting my 2012 Olympic campaign.”

She, like Orton, will try to make it in the K-1 200, where she has been a world champion.

Power, 30, ran the 200 metres in Beijing, placing sixth in her quarter-final, and also at the world championships a year later, but her first international breakthrough came with a bronze medal in the Commonwealth Games in India in 2010.

She will need to run a 23.10 to make the Olympic A standard, a clocking she has done numerous times in her career. She has a career best of 22.86.

In preparation for her London quest, Power will run an indoor season for the first time in years. She will try to make her standard sometime next month, likely in Arizona.

Power credits a more relaxed approach to competition as the biggest change she’s made in the last four years.

“My new motto is work smart, and that’s what I’ve been doing since the Commonwealth Games,” she says. “I just have to stay relaxed and believe in my training and know that I’ve done it before and I’m going to do it again. That’s the experience I’ll take from 2008.”

Blair, 20, and Clayton, 24, defended their Canadian boxing titles last month in Cape Breton and will attend the qualifying tournament for North, Central and South America in Brazil in May. Joey Laviolette may join them, but the Lower Sackville fighter still needs to qualify at a national final team selection event this month in Quebec.

“I get the chance to go to the Olympics, and that’s been my goal from the very first of my boxing career,” Blair says.

This may be Clayton’s last Olympic shot before turning pro.

“It’s what I’ve been waiting for; it’s what I’ve been training for,” says the six-time Canadian champion. “I’ll be ready in May to qualify for the Olympics.”

Gillis, like Power, is seeking a measure of redemption in the Olympics. He isn’t sorry about his 2008 experience in Beijing, but it wasn’t great.

Making it to China was a distant hope for him in the months prior. There were faster 10,000-metre runners in Canada and he knew it.

He set out to improve his time. He could live without the Olympics if he got better.

But some of the faster runners got hurt. Gillis went out and ran the minimum qualifying standard but wasn’t chosen for Team Canada. He successfully appealed the decision to leave him off the squad. But the uncertainty, and negativity, left him unprepared for a major international competition.

“It was kind of funny to show up at the Olympics and see the same people that were on the other side of the appeal talking about why I shouldn’t be there,” he says. “But it was fine once I was there.”

He overcooked the race, getting ahead of himself after 5,000 metres and finishing 33rd.

“I was trying to do it all in one race,” he says. “I was trying to prove everyone wrong. But I’m still running now and I feel stronger for that experience, although you wouldn’t have wanted to talk to me in the couple of months afterward.”

Gillis continued on in the 10,000 metres, where he was twice the Canadian champion, for another year after the 2008 Olympics. He was still trying to prove a point after the joy was gone.

He eventually made the switch to marathons and ran his first one in Houston in 2010 — clocking a 2:13:52 — and knew he could do better.

He says part of his decision to start marathon running at age 29 was that he had the maturity and discipline to put in the training. He routinely runs more than 200 kilometres per week.

Qualifying in Toronto saved him a problem. To have come up short would have guaranteed a spring marathon, probably too close to the summer to have a strong run in London, even if he was fortunate enough to go.

If Gillis doesn’t have to run another marathon to keep his place on the team, his route to London will start with a half-marathon in New York in March.

The plans are tentative. Little is ever that certain.

(www.thechronicleherald.ca)

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