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Newsletter By Dan Plouffe, Adam Beauchemin, Martin Cleary, Jackson Starr & Kaitlyn LeBoutillier
Let the Games begin! You won’t hear those words officially until Friday in Paris, but if you’re archer Eric Peters or soccer player Vanessa Gilles, then you know your first Olympic competition begins in a matter of hours.
Our juices are certainly flowing too as our Ottawa Sports Pages team gets ready to share the stories of our 18 Ottawa Olympians over the next 19 days. From today until the Games close on Aug. 11, you can receive our free Ottawa at the Olympics Daily Newsletter straight to your inbox. That’s when competition will have concluded for the night in Paris, which is six hours ahead of us in Ottawa.
Now before you get too deep into time change mathematics, we’ve got a great tool you can utilize on our website – the OTTAWA OLYMPIANS’ SCHEDULES PAGE.
There you can view the competition calendar for all our Ottawa athletes (in our time zone) to see who is in action when.
You can also use the “Ottawa Olympians’ Schedules” navigation bar at the top of our website to select an individual athlete. You can then click on the “subscribe to calendar” menu at the bottom of the athlete’s schedule page to add/export their events to your digital calendar.
What else what we got in store for you? In our daily newsletter (and later on OttawaSportsPages.ca), our reporting team will give you a recap of that day’s events, plus a preview of what’s to come. We’ll have interviews with athletes, and others involved with the Olympics too.
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(Just in case you’re wondering, our reporting team is based here in Canada, so we’ll be connecting with our local Olympians online/by phone whenever possible.)
We’ll also plan to share links to highlights from the CBC (they are of course Canada’s host broadcaster) and share their coverage when they highlight Ottawa athletes as well.
We’ve got an awesome team of 18 Ottawa Olympians ready to compete in Paris, plus several more from the larger national capital region, who we highlighted in this article. We’ll tell you a lot more about each of them throughout the Olympics with our daily coverage, but here is local team we’ll be following in the coming weeks:
Eliezer Adjibi (Athletics), Toshka Besharah-Hrebacka (Canoe Sprint), Lois Betteridge (Canoe Slalom), Ariane Bonhomme (Cycling – Track), Julie Brousseau (Swimming), Gabriela Dabrowski (Tennis), Natalie Davison (Canoe Sprint), Lauren Gale (Athletics), Jessica Gaudreault (Water polo), Derek Gee (Cycling – Road), Vanessa Gilles (Football/Soccer), Jacqueline Madogo (Athletics), Kate Miller (Diving), Eric Peters (Archery), Regan Rathwell (Swimming), Marial Shayok (Basketball – South Sudan), Mike Woods (Cycling – Road) and Sam Zakutney (Artistic Gymnastics).
You’re welcome to check out the pre-Games profiles we’ve put together on each of our Ottawa Olympians via OttawaSportsPages.ca/Ottawa-at-the-Olympics.
And of course we’ll tell you all about them in greater detail in our daily previews as their competitions are coming up. But let’s start with a few statistics on our local team:
About 1 out of 20 Team Canada athletes is from Ottawa, which is double as many as you’d expect based on our population.
Over half of Canada’s team for the Paris Games are first-time Olympians, while Ottawa’s portion of rookies is closer to two-thirds.
Cyclist Mike Woods and tennis player Gaby Dabrowski are the lone local athletes appearing in their Olympics, while two others in their 30s are making their Olympic debuts – water polo player Jessica Gaudreault and kayaker Natalie Davison.
Team Ottawa also includes two teenagers – diver Kate Miller and swimmer Julie Brousseau.
We can’t wait to share our local Olympians’ stories with you over the next couple weeks!
On top of our newsletter, you can find all of our coverage in one place on our Ottawa at the Olympics central webpage at OttawaSportsPages.ca/Ottawa-at-the-Olympics. If you’ve got friends who love the Olympics, be sure to let them know they can sign up to get our free daily newsletters there too.
We’ve also launched the Ottawa Sports Pages’ TikTok page in time for the Olympics. Along with our X (Twitter) page, those are the best places to find us on social media (unfortunately we can no longer share Canadian news content on Facebook and Instagram).
Ottawa Olympians in action on July 25:
July 25 Preview: Drone spying incident derails enthusiasm for Canada’s defence of Olympic women’s soccer title
The last time Ottawa’s Vanessa Gilles was on the pitch for an Olympic women’s soccer match in Tokyo, she was part of Canada’s greatest soccer moment of all-time. Now as the 28-year-old dual French-Canadian citizen gets set to step on the pitch tomorrow in Paris, her team will be coming off one of the lowest points in Canadian soccer history.
There is suddenly a major dark cloud casting a shadow over the shine of the reigning Olympic women’s soccer champions’ gold medals from the Tokyo Games, after a coach connected to the team was caught flying a drone over their opening match opponent’s practices.
Team Canada women’s soccer coach Bev Priestman will not be on the sidelines for Canada’s contest against New Zealand (Thursday at 11 a.m. ET) – a self-imposed sanction while FIFA and the IOC review possible further penalties.
Priestman said she is “ultimately responsible for conduct in our program,” though she added that she wasn’t aware that Joseph Lombardi, who the Canadian Olympic Committee called “an unaccredited analyst with Canada Soccer,” had used the drones on July 19 and 22.
“Obviously it’s not ideal, especially with such a big tournament on the horizon,” Gilles told The Canadian Press at a team practice today. “But at the end of the day we’re all professionals. We’re all going to make the most out of the situation we’re put in. We’re going to lean on each other.”
Lombardi’s actions are the type that can be career-ending. As director of the Canadian women’s team’s National Development Centre Ontario in Toronto, Lombardi has recruited numerous young players from Ottawa to join the NDC in recent years. It’s tough to imagine many parents now wanting to send their teenagers away to learn under a coach who would be willing to so blatantly violate the ethics of sport.
“On behalf of our entire team, I first and foremost want to apologize to the players and staff at New Zealand Football and to the players on Team Canada,” Priestman said in a statement circulated by the COC. “This does not represent the values that our team stands for.”
The development most definitely puts a damper on what was to be a celebratory moment of sorts for Gilles and Team Canada.
With big crowds and her starting centre-back role cemented, the Paris 2024 Olympics promise to offer a much different experience for Gilles than the Tokyo Games, but one thing she doesn’t want to change is the golden result.
The Louis-Riel high school grad made her Olympic debut in Tokyo, not long after earning her first appearance for the women’s national team. She got her first start in Canada’s third game of the tournament, wound up converting the game-winning shootout penalty kick in the team’s quarter-final triumph over Brazil, and has maintained her position in Canada’s starting lineup ever since.
“Obviously every tournament is different. We have a different group, we have different staff and we’re in different locations. It’s not COVID, we’re not in a pandemic anymore, so in that regard it’s also very different,” Gilles told the Ottawa Sports Pages’ Adam Beauchemin in an interview two weeks ago. “But our mindset, motivation and willingness to work is the same. Similar Canadian DNA, but just with a few different ingredients.”
Gilles will be playing on familiar turf in Paris. In 2018, she competed with France’s under-23 national team (she was eligible to join the program because of her father’s French roots). She’s also now played professionally for two seasons in the French Première Ligue for Olympique Lyonnais, where she’s won two consecutive championships.
And Gilles previously broke into the premiere pro ranks with Bordeaux, which was already a highly unlikely feat for a player who only took up the sport at age 15 with Louis-Riel and FC Capital United Soccer Club (now Ottawa TFC).
While Gilles said there’s plenty to be excited about playing on the world stage in her “second country,” nothing distracts from her and the rest of the team’s ultimate focus.
“At the end of the day, the thing I’m most excited about is playing and then working towards that medal,” highlights the University of Cincinnati grad. “I hope that we have big crowds coming out, which would be really cool for the sport — especially in France. But, for me football is the most important thing and what I’m focused on.”
You can read our full pre-Games profile on Gilles here.
Also in action on the day before the Opening Ceremonies is archer Eric Peters, who will compete in the men’s individual ranking round. The Olympic rookie has blasted his way up the world rankings to the #5 position heading into Paris.
We’re look forward to telling you more about all the action tomorrow evening, when you’ll hear from us next. Enjoy the Games!
From July 24-Aug. 11, the Ottawa Sports Pages will be providing daily Ottawa at the Olympics coverage of the Paris 2024 Games via our free email newsletter. Sign up below to follow along!
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