By Emma Zhao
Kate Miller has never been scared of heights. Her father used to take her to their local pool at the Walter Baker Sports Centre, and during a day off from school, she remembers watching a lifeguard perform a flip off the three-metre diving springboard.
At that time, she was only old enough to jump off the one-metre springboard. But that didn’t stop her.
“I just went up there and copied what he did,” the 18-year-old recalled in a Friday interview with the Ottawa Sports Pages. “I think I just wanted to be like the older kids when I was little, and I saw him do that and thought ‘oh my gosh, I should do that.’”
While her mother was initially apprehensive, her father signed her up for diving lessons with the Nepean-Ottawa Diving Club shortly after. That launched a journey that hit new heights on Tuesday in Doha, Qatar, when Miller qualified for the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games alongside Canadian synchronized diving partner Caeli McKay of Calgary.
“I still can’t believe it. It’s really crazy,” Miller said earlier via Diving Canada from the 2024 FINA World Aquatics Championships. “We’re extremely relieved and very excited.”
The worlds were the pair’s final opportunity to earn a place in the 10 m platform event for the Paris Olympics.
Miller and McKay finished just over nine points clear of Germany for the fourth and final available Olympic qualification position (champion China and bronze-medallist Great Britain had already booked their tickets), with a total score of 287.34.
The Canadians’ third of five dives – an inward 3-and-a-half somersault tuck – was the key to lift them into Olympic qualifying position. They ranked fifth on that dive as well as the next one – their most difficult – and their last dive was solid enough to get Canada a ticket to Paris.
Officially, the pair clinched the Olympic berth for their country and still need to be chosen as Canada’s representatives in advance of the Games, but that’s expected to only be a formality.
Miller and McKay, a 24-year-old who competed at the Tokyo Olympics, were selected by Diving Canada in late 2022 to pursue an Olympic berth together in the 10 m synchro.
Recently, the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games silver medallists have been training together at the national team’s home base in Montreal, which Miller said was incredibly beneficial in advance of the worlds.
“I went into it feeling pretty confident and I felt good about what I was going to do,” recounted Miller, who also placed 25th in the women’s 10 m in her individual event debut at the senior worlds.
Finishing just 12 points away from the podium in Doha was another very encouraging sign for Miller and McKay.
“Being that close (to a medal) is honestly just more exciting for when we go to the Olympics,” highlighted Miller, adding that the pair will focus on increasing their consistency leading into Paris. “We just need to work hard to be able to get that many more points for our dives.”
Miller will be getting ready to compete at the Olympics in the coming months, and then once the Games are finished, she plans to start her first year at the University of Southern California. Miller took a gap year after high school to focus on diving, but she’s looking forward to refocusing on her education in Los Angeles – the host city for the 2028 Olympics.
“I obviously want to do well at the Olympics, but getting a good education is also really important to me,” she underlined. “I’m just really excited about what’s next.”
Though Miller’s advancement onto her sport’s pinnacle stage has come rapidly, the 2022 world junior championships 3 m synchro gold medallist has stood out since a young age in Ottawa and Ontario – even if that first leap at Walter Baker might have been missing a little refinement.
Back in 2017, Miller was recognized as the top local diver at the Ottawa Sports Awards banquet, and at that time, she’d already identified the Olympics as the height she wanted to hit.
She said that her 12-year-old self “would be having a mental breakdown right now – going crazy” if she’d known that her dream would come true just six years later.
“I think I’d just be over the moon.”
