Canada's uniformed swimmers, from left. Emma O'Croinin, Ella Jansen, Julie Brousseau, and not seen in the pool Mary-Sophie Harvey, react after their heat in the women;'s 4x200-meter freestyle relay in Nanterre, France at the Olympic Games on Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024.Matthias Schrader/The Associated Press
When the women’s freestyle-relay team walked out onto the pool deck at the Paris Olympics for the 4x200 preliminary heats on Thursday, the Canadian squad had a bold new look.
Of the four swimmers racing, three of them were getting their first taste of an Olympics.
Julie Brousseau, Ella Jansen and Emma O’Croinin are all Summer Games debutantes in Paris, and are part of a contingent of 16 rookies Canada has brought to these Summer Games.
In a program that has leaned heavily on veteran talent in recent years, this new relay squad was a glimpse of the future, as Swimming Canada looks ahead to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Other than Jansen, who raced the 400-metre individual medley on Monday, Brousseau and O’Croinin were diving into Olympic water for the first time.
“It’s super exciting, super new environment,” said O’Croinin, 21, who is from Edmonton.
“There’s so many fans in the crowd, which is super exciting and also a little overwhelming maybe. But it’s definitely so cool to be a part of it.”
Brousseau did her best to shake off the nerves that come with competing on the sport’s biggest stage.
“I feel like at the end of the day, it’s just a pool. We’ve been used to swimming in ones in Toronto and all over the world, so you’ve just got to treat it like that,” said Brousseau, 18, from Ottawa.
As far as pools go, there may not be a better one than this for Canada’s rookie swimmers to get their feet wet.
The Paris La Défense Arena, a rugby and concert stadium that’s been converted to hold swimming events for nine days, is a big-time venue; with more than 13,000 spectators for swimming, it is far louder and more intimidating than most meets.
“Definitely the biggest crowd I think I can say we’ve all competed in front of,” Jansen said. “It’s crazy how loud prelims is. I feel like prelims is just as loud as finals. And so it’s really cool. It’s also kind of scary, for sure.”
That environment is what Swimming Canada hopes will help prepare its up-and-coming swimmers for a future Games, similar to the experience Summer McIntosh had when she made the Tokyo team three years ago at age 14, and narrowly missed the podium.
The rookies are off to a strong start.
The relay team, swimming with veteran Mary-Sophie Harvey as the fourth member, turned in the seventh fastest time in the preliminary race, which pushed Canada through to the final.
But it was Montreal’s Ilya Kharun, 19, who put in a command performance in his first Olympics on Wednesday night, winning a bronze medal in the 200-metre butterfly.
“There’s really no words. I’m just really, really happy to be in this moment,” Kharun said afterward.
Not only was it his first Olympic medal, it was the first medal the men’s program had won since the 2012 London Olympics.
The men’s team went into Paris coveting a breakthrough, after watching the women win 12 medals over the past two Summer Games, led by young stars such as Penny Oleksiak, who won four medals as a 16-year-old in Rio, and McIntosh, 17, who is contending for multiple podiums in France.
“It means a lot,” Kharun said. “I’m really happy that I got to this moment and I can’t wait to keep showing people what I can do, because I know there’s more to work on.”
The Canadian program needs a pipeline of young swimmers to continue the success they’ve enjoyed at recent Olympics.
Brousseau said the senior members of the team, such as captains Kylie Masse and Harvey, have helped ease their entry into the Games.
“They’ve been super welcoming to all of us and kind of showing us how to do it and go around the pool and manage the environment,” Brousseau said.
“It’s definitely really inspiring seeing people like that and it makes you realize, you know, I can do this too.”
Elaine Tanner, who won three Olympic medals for Canada in women’s swimming as a 17-year-old at the 1968 Games, said the sport has changed a lot since then, and young swimmers have more support available.
“The huge difference however is our swimmers today are so much better prepared for the mental challenges of competition than I ever was,” Tanner said.
“There were no sports psychologists or support staff to prepare us, and women were not allowed scholarships to college back then. We literally went by the seat of our pants, while blazing new trails for others to follow.”
Tanner, who at 5-foot-3 had the nickname Mighty Mouse for her feats in the pool, won two silvers and a bronze in Mexico, and has left a legacy showing world-class swimmers can emerge from Canada.
“We have learned so much from those days and I am so proud of how far we have travelled along that road since then,” Tanner said.
Tanner, 73, has been watching Canada’s crop of young swimmers race from her home in British Columbia, and said she is proud of how they’ve fared.
“My advice to any of the competitors at the Olympics today is to enjoy the process and trust in your training,” she said.
“I know some will go home disappointed and some full of triumph and satisfaction in their performances. But here is the point: no matter what the outcomes are, take the experience and use it as the alchemy for even greater things ahead.”