Josh Liendo of Team Canada competes in the men's 100-metre butterfly final on Day 8 of the Olympic Games at Paris La Defense Arena on Aug. 3, in Nanterre, France.Adam Pretty/Getty Images
Right before the biggest swimming race of his son’s life, Ramon Liendo stood up at the pool in Paris and apologized to people seated nearby for what he was about to do.
He was about to get loud.
“When my son swims I don’t care who is around me,” Ramon said. “I warn people from the beginning. I say, ‘Guys my son is about to swim, I’m going to make noise.’”
But Ramon wasn’t the only one making a whole lot of noise at Paris La Défense Arena over the past week and a half. Team Canada’s men’s swim team, captained by his son Josh Liendo, made an even bigger racket.
With his father cheering him on vociferously from the stands, Josh, 21, claimed silver in the men’s 100-metre butterfly. Right behind him, Ilya Kharun, 19, took the bronze. It was history; the first time two male Canadian swimmers have ever stood on the podium together at an Olympics.
Add to that a bronze won by Kharun in the 200-metre butterfly, and the three medals the Canadian men won in Paris represent their biggest breakthrough in years.
Twelve years to be exact. The dryspell in men’s swimming that was finally snapped at these Olympics stretches back to the 2012 London Summer Games, when Canada won two medals from the male swimmers. Since then, nothing.
There were times the Canadian men’s program looked moribund, heading in the wrong direction as the women’s program stacked up medals at each successive Olympics. Now the men’s side has staged a comeback.
But the genesis of what happened at the 2024 Summer Olympics actually goes back to a training camp held in 2018.
Swimming Canada, believing the men’s program needed a serious jolt to get back on track, took 16 young swimmers from its men’s program to a training camp in Trinidad and Tobago, where 1992 gold medalist Mark Tewksbury addressed the group over the span of three days.
It was a swimming summit of sorts. “Some of you can make the 2020 Olympic Team,” Tewksbury told them. “Most of you can make the 2024 team.” The message was clear, start thinking like Olympians, start believing you are winners and start envisioning yourself on the podium.
Among those in attendance was a 15-year-old Josh Liendo.
“The talk,” Tewksbury says, thinking back on it now, “it was actually a series of presentations.”
The first was a conversation about what he calls the mind-body connection, how a swimmer must believe he can win before he can succeed in the pool. The second was on team-building, and how athletes can feed off each other’s strengths. And for the third, Tewksbury talked about how he and swimming legend Victor Davis overcame a once-tense relationship to become good friends and teammates.
As he talked, Tewksbury wondered who might be the future Olympic medalists in the room. He remembers Josh paying close attention and taking notes.
“Josh was the one that really broke through,” Tewksbury said. “There were a few others. But he was, of that crew, the one that’s gone on to the most success for sure.”
The Tewksbury talk is often mentioned by Swimming Canada officials as a key moment that helped revive the men’s program in Canada.
“It was the plan to be here with them and by Paris have men compete in finals,” said John Atkinson, Swimming Canada’s high performance director.
While women tend to burst on the scene at younger ages, such as Penny Oleksiak with four medals in Rio in 2016 at age 16, or Summer McIntosh with four in Paris at age 17, male swimmers take longer to develop, he said, hitting their ideal physical prime in their early twenties.
But in order to make a great men’s swimmer Olympic-class by that age, their development and technique must start when they are younger.
“It just takes time with men. You can’t suddenly say that a boy’s a man at 14-15 years old,” Atkinson said.
One of the most important things Tewksbury says he did at that camp was bring his old training log from when he competed at the Olympics and letting the swimmers to read on their own time.
It helped put them in the mind of an Olympic champion.
“It’s like a journal. It’s like the workout I did and then my emotions and how I was feeling. It’s like reading my diary basically,” Tewksbury said.
“They could just take it and read it at their leisure over the three days. And lots of them took it.”
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Josh and Kharun were roommates at the athletes’ village in Paris. After Kharun won his bronze in the 200-metre butterfly, he and Josh sat in their room talking about how great it would be if both of them could get on the podium in the 100-metre event, even though it had never been done before.
When they did it, Kharun said he stared at his time on the board in disbelief. Josh said the double medal sent a message – one as loud as his father shouting from the stands.
“I think that’s a huge momentum shift on the men’s side,” Josh said. “We made a big statement there.”
Josh became the first Black swimmer from Canada to claim an Olympic medal in swimming. And after his son stood on the podium, Ramon was suddenly struggling for words.
“I was able to hand him the Canadian flag, which was awesome, because he was able to walk with the flag,” Ramon said.
“I kissed him on the forehead and I told him what I always tell him, you’re the best man I know. I’m so proud of you, and I’m happy for you, son.”
Atkinson said the three-medal breakthrough from the men is hopefully the start of a new era.
“They’re showing that they’re here, that they can compete. We’ve got to find others and bring them through as well,” Atkinson said.