By Victoria Klassen
On top of the strong team of athletes, a number of Ottawa coaches will occupy key roles for Team Canada at the Rio Olympics.
Paul ApSimon owns the distinction of being the only one to coach athletes in two different sports on the Olympic programme.
One of his athletes is Hamilton’s Eleanor Harvey, who will be competing in foil fencing. Since 2009, ApSimon has acted as coach for modern pentathlete Melanie McCann for her fencing event.
“I think he’s the only coach on Team Canada coaching two separate sports, which is really neat,” notes McCann, who is also supported by physiotherapist Jamie Trick and receives running coaching from Mike Woods, once a record-setting middle distance runner now set to compete at Rio 2016 in road cycling. “We have some great talent in Ottawa that will be represented at the Games, so that’s always special.”
Harvey, who represents ApSimon’s Ottawa Fencing club, will be Canada’s lone Olympic representative in the individual women’s foil competition. ApSimon has been involved in many past multi-sport games, so has a good sense of what his job will look like in Rio.
“We’ll get our draw two days before, we’ll know our opponents, we’ll do some analysis, prepare a game plan, and do a couple of practice lessons – have the fencers simulate one of the fencers she’ll be fencing,” explains the Henry Munro Middle School physical education teacher. “Then it’s just a question of warming her up and keeping her focused on the objective.
“Hopefully by that time, there won’t be a lot to do, all of the work will be done beforehand. Sometimes it’s just a question of keeping them relaxed and confident. It can be as easy as saying ‘you can do it’ or as tough as working hard on convincing them that they actually belong at that stage.”
ApSimon will have lots of help on hand too, with the other members of the Canadian women’s foil team present to support Harvey, including Ottawa native Kelleigh Ryan. He would have preferred to be helping them get ready for their competition, however.
With the International Olympic Committee imposing a stringent cap on fencing participants, one men’s and one women’s team event gets excluded from each Games on a rotational basis. For Rio 2016, it is women’s foil fencing and men’s sabre.
The Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games-champion Canadian women would have been in line for one of the eight Olympic team berths in another year, but instead had to settle for an Apr. 25 global event in Rio where they placed 9th.
“It’s been a consistent year with this team. Our goal is to move from the top-8 to the top-5 by 2020” in order to guarantee a Tokyo Olympics berth, indicates ApSimon, whose group also won silver at the late-June Pan Am Championships.
An individual from B.C. is sponsoring the full Canadian women’s foil team’s trip to Rio.
“That’s how we’re able to bring the whole team down to prepare Eleanor for the Games, which is amazing because fencing is a combat sport and if you want to train, you have to have opponents,” ApSimon underlines. “There are many people who will be alone heading down to the Games because they won’t have any team members with them, because of course there is no team event.
“So we are going down as a team, it’s just unfortunate that we won’t be competing as a team.”
Ottawa Coaches & Officials
John Hawes from Stittsville is the Team Canada modern pentathlon head coach. In Rio, two of his athletes will be Melanie McCann and Donna Vakalis. Hawes competed in the 1972 Munich Olympics in swimming, and in the 1976 Montreal Olympics in pentathlon. He is the owner and a head coach of Ottawa’s ROC Swim Club.
Glenroy Gilbert is coaching the Canadian 4×100-metre relay track-and-field athletes at the Rio Olympics. Gilbert has competed in five Olympics, and this will be his fourth Olympics coaching. Representing Canada, he won a gold medal in the 4×100 meter relay in 1996 Atlanta Olympics. He also competed in bobsleigh at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics.
Michal Staniszewski coaches the canoe slalom national team out of the Pumphouse at Lebreton Flats. He will guide Ottawa natives Mike Tayler and Cam Smedley in Rio. Representing Poland, Staniszewski competed in three Olympics in canoeing, and won silver at the Sydney 2000 Olympics in the men’s C-2 slalom event. He began coaching with the Canadian national team in 2001 and became the national slalom head coach after the Athens 2004 Olympics.
Carol-Anne Chénard will be a soccer official at the Rio Olympics. The 39-year-old from Orleans started refereeing locally at age 15. Chénard now has a long list of international tournaments she has refereed, including the London 2012 Olympics, the 2011 and 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup and the 2010 FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup, where she called the final. The former speed skating national team member has a PhD from McGill University in microbiology and immunology.
A number of Ottawa natives will travel to Rio as Olympic team support staff and many more work in Ottawa for national sports organizations, such as: Peter Eriksson (athletics head coach), Jacques Landry (cycling head coach) and Chris Westwood (cycling team leader), Christine Peters (equestrian dressage team leader), Jamie Trick (modern pentathlon physiotherapist), John Atkinson (swimming team leader) and Jean-Sébastien Hartnell (men’s volleyball therapist).