They are located thousands of kilometres from Rio de Janeiro, but they were there when it all began. Every four years, the Olympic spirit trickles down to the grassroots clubs that taught, nurtured and developed most Olympians.
In that spirit, Victoria City Rowing Club hosted an Olympic send-off at Elk Lake on Saturday for the Rio-bound pullers.
“This lake is an amazing place,” said Vic City club manager Brenda Taylor, a two-time Olympic gold-medallist rower from Barcelona in 1992. “You have 12-year-old kids learning to row, 80-year-olds keeping active by rowing and the Olympians training right beside them.”
It serves both sides of the equation well.
“Being around all these people at the lake keeps the Olympians grounded in reality,” Taylor said.
And the young aspirants and older duffers are certainly inspired by the Rio-bound athletes in their midst.
“It gets the general public to see the Olympians as real people,” Taylor said. “Yes, they are role models, but they are also human beings. Don’t be afraid to approach them and talk to them. They are nice people.”
The national team is based at Elk Lake in Saanich and Lake Fanshawe in London, Ont. Even those rowers not produced by Vic City, but who relocated here to pursue their Olympics teams, are embraced warmly by the club and the other rowers at Elk Lake.
“People here at the lake really get excited by their success and are so supportive,” Taylor said.
For those who grew up on the lake, connections run deep.
“Only a couple short years ago, I was training with the Victoria City Rowing Club on Elk Lake as a junior rower,” said Caileigh Filmer, 19, who will represent Canada in the women’s Olympic eight at Rio as the youngest member of the rowing team.
“I think back to those times often, where I built the necessary training habits, that have helped me get to where I am today,” said Filmer, a Mount Douglas Secondary grad, whose Olympic crew is based in London.
The Olympians based at Elk Lake are the men’s heavyweight and women’s lightweight crews. They include the women’s lightweight double of Claremont Secondary grad Lindsay Jennerich and Stelly’s Secondary grad Patricia Obee, 2014 world championship silver medallists and fourth at the 2015 worlds, who won the final big World Cup race before Rio in Lucerne, Switzerland, last month.
Also at Elk Lake is the Canadian men’s four, which includes Kai Langerfeld of Parksville, who will become a second-generation Olympian in Rio, joining dad and 1976 Montreal Olympian York Langerfeld. Kai Langerfeld, out of Ballenas Secondary, is joined by Tim Schrijver and 2012 London Olympic eights silver-medallists Conlin McCabe and Will Crothers in the fours boat, which placed fourth at the 2015 world championships.
The Elk Lake-based men’s quadruple sculls features 2012 London Olympics eights silver-medallist Rob Gibson, Will Dean from Brentwood College Club, Pascal Lussier of Quebec and 30-year-old dual citizen Julian Bahain, who won four world championship medals and an Olympic bronze medal for France at Beijing in 2008, before relocating to train on Elk Lake and compete for Canada.
Kate Sauks of Vic City is one of four Canadian spares named for Rio.
The Elk Lake-based rowers begin leaving next week for Toronto, where Olympic staging will take place for all Canadian teams to get their athletes used the time zone and potential mugginess of Brazil. The rowing competition of the Rio Olympic Games takes place from Aug. 6-14 at Rodrigo de Freitas Lake.
Because of the Pacific orientation of the next Summer Olympics in 2020 at Tokyo, team staging for Canada will take place in Victoria and Vancouver.
Victoria City Rowing Club is already busy building that Canadian team of tomorrow.
Ten Vic City rowers and two coaches have been selected for the national junior team that will compete in the annual Canada-U.S.-Mexico regatta July 10-18 in Sarasota, Florida, and the world junior championships Aug. 21-28 in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
