Every athlete has a favourite recovery meal after training or competing. Patrick Keane’s is among the oddest – pickled herring. The Claremont Secondary graduate can have his fill of it this summer if they serve it in the Athletes Village dining room of the Tokyo Olympics.
Keane, 23, was a reserve in his first year with the University of Victoria Vikes rowing team. His second season was technically his first and he was named UVic rookie male athlete of the year. Now he is an Olympian, among the 75 Island or Island-based athletes across all sports who will compete in the Tokyo Olympics or Paralympics.
Victoria City rower Keane and Maxwell Lattimer of UBC qualified for the Games on Sunday by winning the lightweight men’s doubles in the last-chance qualifier held in Lucerne, Switzerland. All three Canadian boats entered – also the men’s four and Trevor Jones in men’s singles – qualified for Tokyo.
Rowing Canada had previously pre-qualified seven boats – women’s eight, four, pair, single, double, lightweight double and men’s pair. With the three added Sunday, the 10 boats that will race in Tokyo will be the most for this nation since the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, when Canada won six rowing medals.
More than 400 rowers from 49 nations were in Lucerne in their last-gasp bid to make the Olympics. The racing was conducted in a downpour, conditions familiar to the Canadian rowers during all those early-morning winter hours spent training on Elk Lake. What wasn’t familiar was having the Olympics postponed a year due to a pandemic.
“This is a pretty abnormal experience and I am just so blessed to get it,” said Keane, in a statement.
Keane and Lattimer train with the heavyweight rowers on Elk Lake in Saanich and Quamichan Lake near Duncan.
“Getting to race against our category, it was a very big thrill, so much excitement,” said Keane, who joined the UVic Vikes program out of Claremont in 2015-16.
“To be racing people in our boat class, we got that immediately after the first race, and just carried on in the semifinal and final.”
Keane and Lattimer shunted the Czech Republic to second place to claim the Olympic berth.
Meanwhile, only two of the 13 men’s fours crews would advance to Tokyo and Canada nabbed the final berth behind France by holding off third-place South Africa.
“Canadian grit, you know,” said crew member Gavin Stone.
The crew was stroked by Elk Lake veteran Will Crothers, who won the silver medal with Canadian eight at the 2012 London Olympics under legendary coach Mike Spracklen.
It will be the first Olympics for 23-year-old singles sculler Jones, who uprooted from Peterborough, Ont., to relocate to the Island to chase his dreams.
“It feels great, it’s been a long time coming and is just nice after over 18 months of working toward this to have finally done it and to know that I get to race in Tokyo,” he said, in a statement.
“I knew the Russian was going to go out hard and maybe get out of contact. I knew if I stuck with the Polish guy, I could work through him in the middle and then just sprint at the end. The sprint was a mad dash, just throwing everything at it and hanging on for dear life at the end. The last five years of work have been leading to this moment.”
Rowing Canada, which has won 41 Olympic medals, is looking to rebound at Tokyo following the single silver medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics through the Victoria lightweight women’s double of Patricia Obee and Lindsay Jennerich.