Chasing Olympic dreams

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This article was published 24/03/2016 (2959 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Whether it is a path unknown or a course well-travelled, the road to Rio takes different directions for every Manitoban who is on it.

Some things stay the same. No matter what sport has shaped these athletes’ bodies, no matter how old they are, the march to the Olympics is always one of gruelling tests and trials. Collect the points. Hit the standard. Find a way to get it done.

How they do it can be wildly different. For some local Olympic hopefuls, following the road to Rio is a full-time job; for others, it’s mostly a labour of love. Some of them picked up the trail years ago, while others found it with a sudden soar.

Wheelchair sprinter Colin Mathieson made his Paralympic debut in Atlanta 1996. That was two years before 17-year-old swimming phenom Kelsey Wog was even born, but now both are in the Olympic conversation.

In some cases, the road itself is new. Mandy Marchak never dreamed of taking rugby to the Olympics, because rugby wasn’t in the Games. Then the International Olympic Committee voted to add the sport in Rio, and suddenly everything changed.

“It was a whole lot of exciting, and a whole lot of scary,” Marchak said. “It becomes this dream you want to be a reality, and nobody wants to fail… it also becomes a reality that I’m competing against 25 other girls, that all wake up and train this hard.”

Whether Marchak makes it, whether any of them will, is yet to be decided. For now, there are more than a dozen Manitoban athletes on the road to Rio, each with a different story. Each one fighting to stake their claim on one piece of Olympic glory.

When the world converges on Brazil in August, there’s a good chance some Manitobans will be there, wearing the Maple Leaf. Over the next four months of competition and qualification, the Free Press will watch their progress down that road.

Rio is beckoning. So let’s pause to meet a few of the Manitobans who are following the call.

NICOLE SIFUENTES

Middle-distance runner, 2012 Olympian

Age: 29

The first time around, making the Olympics took everything Nicole Sifuentes had. She left nothing on the track. It wasn’t an option: to qualify for London, the Winnipegger needed to run her 1,500-metre distance faster than she ever had before.

That’s the memory that lingers, she said. It’s a little less about the thrill of those Olympics, where she made the semifinals. It’s more about what it took to get there, a “desperate” battle that pushed her to her limit and then, somehow, beyond.

“I was almost finding my way in the dark,” Sifuentes said, chatting during a whirlwind visit to Winnipeg this week. “I was so worried and stressed, and I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. I remember that summer in 2012, the roller coaster of emotions. Crying myself to sleep every night thinking, ‘will I make it?’ ”

The tears were worth it. On June 20, 2012, days before the deadline, Sifuentes broke the 1,500m finish line in 4:04.74. It was almost two seconds faster than her previous personal best — and it was below the Olympic standard of 4:06.00.

Weeks later, the Vincent Massey alumna walked into the Olympic Stadium in front of 80,000 people. She looked up and knew her husband and parents and sisters were somewhere in the human sea. In that moment, it wasn’t just one athlete’s dream.

“It made it just so much greater than something I was doing,” she said. “It is something all of us remember, a whole family thing with my coach. It was the fact that they were there to share with them. That made the experience for me.”

Four years later, the road has shifted. Sifuentes, who now lives in Michigan, already ran the Olympic standard at a 2015 meet. So that pressure has vanished; but to make Rio, she will have to finish top three at the Canadian Olympic trials in July.

That part could be tricky. In 2012, only one other Canadian woman, Hilary Stellingwerff, had achieved the Olympic standard by the time trials rolled around. Now, three have already run it, and Sifuentes said she thinks at least four more are on the brink.

“If even one more person gets the standard, there’s going to be someone in that race who has the Olympic standard, and doesn’t make the team,” she said. “And there’s going to be some very disappointed women, and I just have to make sure I’m not one of them.” 

And yet, as Sifuentes prepares to start a critical outdoor season next month, that question doesn’t keep her up at night the way it did en route to London. It’s almost as though, along with all the sweat and pain she left on the track, she also left that feeling of desperation in the past.

“This is not my one and only chance,” she said. “I have already gone. Whatever happens this year, I’m already an Olympian… Maybe I can say this because I’ve already been, but it’s not the biggest thing in life. I put myself through quite a lot to get there, I was proud to have made it, and it was hard.”

MANDY MARCHAK

Rugby Sevens

Age: 31

When Mandy Marchak first packed her bags for British Columbia to chase her rugby dream, it wasn’t an Olympic one.

It would be years before the IOC voted that women’s sevens would make its Olympic debut in Rio. So all Marchak wanted back then, at the age of 19, was to play at the highest level she could reach.

Yes, even if that meant moving 2,400 kilometres away from Winnipeg, and picking up a landscaping job to pay for training. 

“I wanted to be the best, and I was willing to do whatever it took,” Marchak said. “My life choice was, I’m going to pick up and move to B.C., and get scouted. And I’m going to worry about the next thing when it comes.”

She knew she had the talent. Rugby is something of a Marchak family tradition, and the Team Canada centre joked she grew up at Maple Grove watching her dad and uncles play. She got her own first taste of the game at Grant Park High School, then steadily moved up through the national ranks.

After moving West, Marchak’s career flourished. Not only did she became a wrecking ball for Canada’s fifteens and sevens, but she was a standout with the Capilano side, and in 2009 was named the B.C. Rugby Union’s player of the year. The next season, she launched a three-year stint in England to further hone her game.

Then the Olympics came knocking. In Amsterdam last spring, the Canadian women beat favoured Australia to claim their first World Rugby Women’s Sevens Series Cup. With that, they also became the first Canadian team to lock up a spot in Rio.

“That was amazing,” Marchak said. “We had won, and we qualified. The look on everybody’s face, it was such an emotional and overwhelming feeling. You’ve never been so proud to be a part of something.”

Now, the pressure is ramping up. The Canadian Olympic roster won’t be named until the summer, and although Marchak has more than a decade of experience as a national team weapon, she is not taking anything for granted.

“I need to perform,” she said. “You’re only as good as your last performance, your last training session. You can’t show up and have a bad day, because someone will outperform you. You can’t take it lightly. Everything counts, from here on in.”

If Marchak is among the top 12 performers named to the Olympic team, she will take a rare place in history. This will be the first Olympic women’s rugby sevens tournament — and it will be played by the women who devoted their lives to build it.

“We’ve had a lot of firsts, and made a lot of history,” she said. “With a lot of people retiring after this, it would be the icing on the cake. It would really be a nice finish for a lot of us to have been through the hard work together. We made history.”

LEAH KIRCHMANN

Cycling

Age: 25

In retrospect, being named as an alternate for the 2012 Canadian Olympic team was just what Leah Kirchmann needed.

At the time, the Winnipeg cyclist would rather have been competing in London. But when she considers all the changes that she’s made since, including a major move to Europe and three national championships, that close call was worth it.

“Ever since then, I’ve been focused on Rio and thinking of what I need to do,” Kirchmann said. “I was disappointed, but I also used it as motivation to figure out what are the things I need to improve, what I can do better.”

For Kirchmann, that meant becoming a stronger all-around performer. She’d always been a talented sprinter, ever since she joined the Manitoba Cycling Association’s Kids of Mud program as a teen.

Back then, the Vincent Massey student thought it would be a fun cross-training effort for her first sport, cross-country skiing. But the tactical battle of cycling enthralled her; soon, she realized she was drawn more to the road than the snow. 

(By the way, is there something in the water at Vincent Massey? Kirchmann, Sifuentes and swimmers Kelsey Wog and Mackenzie Glover are all former or current students, not to mention talents such as rising Grade 11 runner Victoria Tachinski.)

Flash forward to her career as a pro. For 2016, she zeroed in on boosting her climbing, and her time-trial performance. Those efforts paid off: In January, after four years competing with pro team Optum in the United States, Kirchmann moved to Holland to join Team Liv-Plantur.

The move put her in the middle of the toughest cycling in the world, and already she is rising. Earlier this month, she claimed her first European victory at the Drentse Acht van Westerveld, becoming the first Canadian woman to win it in its 10-year history. Two weeks before, she’d finished second at the Omloop van het Hageland race.

“I chose a good time,” Kirchmann said, calling from the team house in Holland. “I’ve had a fantastic start to the season, and I’m already showing that I’m competitive with the best riders in the world. But I always think there’s room for improvement.”

That’s the attitude she must have, to swap the 2012 “alternate” title for a Maple Leaf. Kirchmann knows she is among the pool of elites from which Cycling Canada will fill what will likely be three spots for the Olympic road race, two in the time trial.

But the final decision, which comes down June 15th, can be somewhat subjective. Which means that all Kirchmann can do is keep her head down, and her legs moving — but don’t be surprised if she speeds straight through to Rio.

“I just need to consistently show that I can perform at the highest level and the hardest events, and have consistent results,” she said. “I just have to show that I’m one of the strongest riders in Canada and deserve one of those Olympic spots.” 

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca