Canadian swim trials draw fine line between winners, also-rans

It's a carnival like atmosphere in the pool at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre. And the water is charged with electricity.

There's a lot on the line.

For every Canadian swimmer who dives in, Olympic or Paralympic passage hangs in the balance. In that sense, it's sport in its purest form.  You win or you lose, you make the cut or you don't.

The Canadian Olympic and Para-swimming trials occur a full four months from the Games in Rio de Janeiro but Swimming Canada is asking its athletes to be at their best right now. 

There will be no second chances and no makeup exams.

"World-class swimming is about performance and, more importantly, it's about performance on the day," reckoned Swimming Canada's director of high performance and sport, John Atkinson. "We want to have trials in a place where swimmers recall past success and strive to replicate or exceed that success."

There could be no better place to do just that. 

Canadian swimmers hit a high-water mark at the Pan American Games stage here last summer. They produced 28 podium performances, including eight gold medals. In the Parapan Am Games, the results were even more pronounced. There were 91 Canadian medals in the pool at those Games.

But at the Olympics and Paralympics the depth of competition will far exceed what the athletes experienced in Toronto. And so Swimming Canada is asking its hopefuls to win races and achieve FINA standards which allow them to be ranked among the top 16 in the world.

"We're trying to develop a situation where every swimmer who makes this team goes to the Olympics knowing they can perform and progress through to a final," Atkinson said unapologetically.

So far, with the stakes exceedingly high, we've seen plenty of drama. 

In the men's 100-metre breaststroke Jason Block won the race but missed the Olympic qualifying time by an agonizing 2/100ths of a second. 

In the women's 100 butterfly, Katerine Savard, a Commonwealth Games gold medallist and 2012 Olympian, made the qualifying time but finished third in her specialty race to 15-year-old Penny Oleksiak, who set a new Canadian record, and Noemie Thomas, who was just a fraction behind that. It may have dashed the further Olympic dreams of Savard, who had been the Canadian record holder heading into the race.

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"It is a very fine line," Atkinson admitted. "But just because a swimmer misses in an individual event doesn't mean they won't be more determined to win a spot on a relay squad."

In spite of the brutality of the process, there have been riveting moments so far at these Olympic and para-trials.

Long medal drought

In the women's 400 freestyle, Brittany MacLean, who had lost last season entirely through injury, smashed her own Canadian record by more than a second, and swam the second fastest time in the world to date. She finished seventh in the same event at the London 2012 Olympics and will head to Rio with high hopes of becoming the first Canadian woman to win a swimming medal at the Olympics since Marianne Limpert took silver in the 200 individual medley in 1996 in Atlanta.

After MacLean swam, her older sister Heather, who had also competed in London, ran onto the pool deck and the two shared a joyous, tearful embrace in front of the raucous and supportive crowd.

Para-swimmer Maxime Rousselle was so elated to have bettered his long-time friend and rival James Leroux in the 100 breaststroke that he unleashed a happy "f-bomb" in a live interview to the full house.

In becoming the first male swimmer to qualify by claiming the 100 backstroke, 18-year-old Javier Acevedo of Markham, Ont., was over the moon.

"It's my dream," he said with great eloquence. "And now that my dream is achieved I'm at a loss for words."

In the women's 400 individual medley, Canadian record holder and world championship medallist Emily Overholt battled Sydney Pickrem, whose parents were cheering wildly from the stands. It was a neck-and-neck race which had people on their feet from the outset. In the end, Pickrem won by a touch, both she and Overholt qualified for Rio and they hugged and danced when it was over.

"It's the Olympics," Pickrem gushed.  "That's all you need to say."

Pins and needles

And then there was 31-year-old Jonathan Dieleman, who hails from Quick, B.C. He's a former rodeo athlete who swam alone in the para-50 beaststroke event. Dieleman needed to come close to his Canadian record time in order to get the nomination for the Paralympics. He missed by a few 10ths of a second. But it may have been good enough.

"My parents keep asking me, 'are you going….are you going…?'" Dieleman said in the aftermath. "They've already bought their tickets to Rio and I hope I have an answer for them soon."

In the final analysis, Canada may be sending a smaller swimming team to Brazil than they did to London four years ago when 31 swimmers won three medals. But as he took it all in, John Atkinson seemed very much at ease with the decision by Swimming Canada to set the bar extremely high.

"I've got nothing against big teams so long as all of the members have a chance to be competitive," he explained. "In choosing swimmers to compete at the Olympics we must try to choose swimmers who will perform."

At these trials it's a very fine line that separates the winners from the also-rans.

It's also a stark reminder that going beyond that same fine line is ultimately what it takes to be an Olympian.