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Island athletes shine at Youth Summer Olympics

The 2014 Youth Summer Olympics, taking place in Nanjing, China, are meant to introduce promising young athletes to the international multi-sport Games experience through truncated events.

The 2014 Youth Summer Olympics, taking place in Nanjing, China, are meant to introduce promising young athletes to the international multi-sport Games experience through truncated events.

For instance, the field hockey is five-a-side and the basketball three-on-three. Canada was restricted to one entry in a team sport and chose field-hockey fives. On the Canadian team is rising 16-year-old player Harbir Sidhu of Victoria.

The rowing competition in Nanjing is over 1,000 metres, not the usual 2,000.

But whatever the distance, Caileigh Filmer from the Victoria City Rowing Club and Larissa Werbicki from Saskatoon are getting pretty good at it. They won bronze in the Youth Summer Olympics women’s pair Wednesday behind Romania and China with only 4/100ths of a second separating the top-three boats.

“Short distances are not my strength, so it has been a challenge to stay in the mindset after the world junior championships,” said Filmer, in a Rowing Canada release.

Filmer and Werbicki captured the silver medal earlier this month at the world junior championships, behind Romania, on the Elbe River in Hamburg, Germany.

Yet, the multi-sport setting did prove beneficial as an introduction to something other than a rowing-only championship.

“It is so cool to be at a multi-sport event and to see all the other sports and athletes,” said Filmer, a Mount Douglas Secondary graduate recruited by Cal-Berkeley of the NCAA.

Canada was limited to two boats in the Youth Olympics rowing but made the most of it, with Daniel de Groot of St. Catharines, Ont., capturing the bronze medal Wednesday in men's single sculls behind Germany and Azerbaijan.

“Being able to participate in such an important event is all part of the development of our next generation of Olympic medallists,” said Rowing Canada high performance director Peter Cookson, in a statement, before the Youth Summer Olympics.

This is the second Youth Summer Olympics. The first took place in 2010 at Singapore. The third in the series are scheduled for 2018 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

cdheensaw@timescolonist.com