By Braedon Clark
Name: SHERRAINE SCHALM
Sport: FENCING
Event: EPEE
Age: 37
Resides: VERONA, ITALY
Associations: OTTAWA FENCING CLUB, UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA
Previous Olympics: 2000, 2004, 2008
With an unmatched resume in Canadian fencing, 37-year-old Sherraine Schalm of Ottawa Fencing will enter the London 2012 Games with a different mindset than any three of her previous Olympics experiences.
The University of Ottawa graduate had plenty on her plate already, but that workload grew exponentially when she gave birth to her first child just three months before London qualification began. She and husband Matteo welcomed daughter Gaia two winters ago.
Paul ApSimon, Schalm’s former coach at uOttawa and Canada’s fencing team leader in London, thinks having the baby has indirectly helped her.
“Right now she’s in a good head-space. She’s enjoying life,” ApSimon says. “The birth of her daughter changed the way she approached fencing. She’s got something more in her life, and I think that balance is really going to help her game.”
That balance has at least made Schalm’s training sessions more eventful. As she delightfully detailed in a blog for the Toronto Star, Schalm, who now lives in Italy, was forced to take the unusual step of bringing her infant daughter along to watch her train.
In addition to charming her mother’s colleagues, as babies are wont to do, Gaia also acted as a de facto bodyguard for Mom. As Schalm relates it, a routine match changed quickly when her opponent, a teenage boy, struck a hard blow to her elbow.
Falling to the ground, Schalm cried out in pain, but it was nothing compared to the screeching that cascaded from Gaia’s playpen. She’d seen her mother fall and was not pleased.
“Just as she started to calm down, my teenage adversary came over to apologize,” Schalm wrote in the Star. “Gaia looked at him and with all the righteous indignation a 10-month-old can muster, she started screeching, crying and pointing at him as if to publicly shame him for hurting her mother.”
Aside from that minor hiccup, Schalm’s training has progressed well, as she is certain to be named to Canada’s Olympic roster on July 10. Owner of 32 career World Cup medals and Canada’s only fencer to win an overall World Cup circuit crown, this will be Schalm’s fourth Olympics. She might not be heading to London as a medal favorite, but ApSimon, her former coach, thinks Schalm’s dark horse status might give her a leg up on the competition.
“I’m looking forward to London and seeing what she can do there,” ApSimon says of the athlete who was ranked 25th in the world last season. “She’s coming in under the radar and I think she’ll be able to surprise a lot of people.”
Competition schedule
Mon., July 30 – 4:30 a.m. ET