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By Callum Fraser
He calls himself the old bull.
In 2012, John Hastings was a tiny fraction of a second from reaching the Olympic Games. At the Canadian team trials, a 20-year-old Mike Tayler bested his fellow Ottawa paddler over the course of four whitewater kayak runs by a grand total of .11 seconds to claim Canada’s lone canoe slalom Olympic berth.
Hastings decided to retire from the sport after that, got married, had a baby and settled into a job as an investment advisor for the Royal Bank of Canada.
“I was kind of tired,” recalls Hastings, now 32. “You’ve been doing this for eight years full-time and you need to re-focus and do other stuff.”
But in 2015, Hastings attempted a comeback for the Pan Am Games in Toronto.
“When you’ve been doing this for so long it’s kind of hard to walk away,” explains the Carleton University and University of Ottawa business grad. “Especially when the sport is your passion.”
While he didn’t end up getting Canada’s lone official Pan Am Games entry, Hastings did compete in the concurrent Continental Olympic Qualifier and was able to qualify Canada’s K-1 spot for Rio thanks to his 5th place overall finish.
Now atop the national team standings, he’s currently leading the charge to represent Canada come July in Brazil.
With the help of a supportive wife and an understanding employer, the past RBC Olympian program member is able to train during the week while also leading the life he previously left the sport for.
On weekdays, the Aurora native bikes from his Sparks St. office during his lunch five minutes down the road to the Pumphouse Whitewater Course near Lebreton Flats and trains for an hour. One of the reasons Hastings was able to jump back into competition after a three-year hiatus was because he kept in shape.
“Our sport is very technical,” underlines Hastings, who’s lived in Ottawa since age 18. “So as long as you maintain a good level of fitness, your technique doesn’t really suffer.”
Based on a points system for top performances, Canada’s Olympic representative will be chosen following the May 21-22 national team trials in B.C. and the season’s first World Cups.
Hastings’ setup differs from many of the other athletes gunning for the Olympic spot who are currently training overseas in preparation.
“Guys that do this full-time, if you’re a betting man, you’d put your money on one of those guys to win,” Hastings acknowledges. “But in this sport, it’s not necessarily about how fit you are, it’s about where your headspace is. If you’re not too stressed about the outcome, what’s holding you back from doing your best, right?”
That’s a significant change in mentality from four years earlier when all of Hastings’ energy was directed towards paddling.
“I really have nothing to lose,” explains the athletes who was 8th overall on the 2010 World Cup circuit. “I’ve got a family, I’ve got a child; things are good. Going to the Olympics would just be a dream come true.”
Tayler wants repeat appearance
The last time the Summer Olympics rolled around, Mike Tayler was packing his bags for the United Kingdom.
He was the rising star who upset the veterans and made both his senior national team and Olympic debut in the same year.
“It was an incredible experience for me to be able to compete at such a young age,” reflects Tayler, who earned a top-20 finish in London. “I believe I was the youngest men’s kayak competitor there.”
He was the youngest Canadian hopeful then, and he remains the youngest Canadian contender now.
“(Making the Olympics) is something – in this sport in particular – that is so rare and so difficult to do,” adds the 24-year-old Carleton University political science student. “To achieve it once is already pretty impressive, but to go again would just be incredible.”
Hayward hashing Rio plans
The other lead contender for the K-1 berth is former Carleton University architecture student Ben Hayward, Canada’s top-ranked canoe slalom kayaker the last three years.
With France as a home base and travel to the southern hemisphere in winter, Hayward is one of several athletes who’s pushed to pursue the sport full-time.
“I’ve been surrounding myself with the best opportunities the last couple years (by) relocating to Europe and trying to train with the European athletes who really have a stronger depth of field than we do,” highlights Canada’s 2015 Pan Am Games rep and bronze medallist.
Hayward believes consistency will be key given the change in Canadian qualification criteria to include each athlete’s best results in four events, and that’s what he’s been pursuing in Europe.
“When I didn’t get to go (to the 2012 Olympics), that defeat was pretty crushing for a while,” recalls the 25-year-old Edmonton native. “I was really disappointed to miss out on London, so these past four years have really been just making sure I have the best possible shot at Rio.”
Smedley on path to Olympic ‘redemption’
For C-1 competitor Cam Smedley, the focus is a bit different. The 25-year-old won’t face quite the same domestic competition as the K-1 athletes, though the #2 athletes in the standings happens to be his younger brother Liam, 21.
“I’ve kind of been setting the bar and Liam’s been chasing it,” smiles the Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games silver medallist. “And he’s definitely slowly closing that gap.”
Along with Hayward and fellow Ottawa River Runners paddler Tayler, Smedley has been training on European World Cup courses in preparation for the Olympics. Rio would be his Olympic debut, though at one time he’d thought he was likely going to London when Canada had anticipating receiving an additional international Olympic berth in men’s C-1 only to have it not materialize.
“It feels like a nice redemption,” signals Smedley, a part-time Carleton mechanical engineering student. “Maybe it makes this experience more satisfying that I know I’ll actually be competing for Canada.”