Margaret Mac Neil blasts out of the water on her way to winning the women's 100m butterfly at the Canadian Olympic Swim Trials in Toronto on May 13.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
The road to Paris for Canada’s highly touted Olympic swimmers begins this week at the foot of the Eiffel Tower – or at least a plywood facsimile of the real thing.
To inject some added inspiration into this week’s Olympic trials, where roster spots for the Paris Summer Games will be won or lost, organizers have placed a 13-foot wooden replica of the French landmark at one end of the pool at Toronto’s Pan Am Sports Centre.
It was originally used as a shopping-mall decoration. But the faux Eiffel has since been hauled out of storage, dusted off, and is now being pressed into patriotic duty, reminding each swimmer of where the finish line ultimately is.
“It’s setting the stage. This is what you’re swimming for,” said Alan Raphael, Swimming Canada’s director of marketing, who spent the past few months scouring North America to find a passable rendition of the wrought-iron lattice structure. That challenge turned out to be more difficult than anyone imagined.
Mr. Raphael initially had his eyes set on a 30-foot steel behemoth in Las Vegas. But the cost – somewhere around $50,000 to rent and ship from Nevada – quickly crushed that dream.
“It would have been great,” Mr. Raphael said. “I said, ‘Fantastic, I can’t afford that. So let’s keep looking.’ ”
A second option in Montreal also proved costly to move. But the wooden shopping-mall Eiffel came at a fraction of the price.
And as metaphors go, it works. Just over two months from Paris, the Canadians head to the Olympics with towering expectations.
The last two Summer Games resulted in gaudy medal hauls for Canada in swimming. After the team won six in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, it answered with six more in Tokyo in 2021, proving the first wave of success was no fluke.
This squad could be one of the deepest Canada has sent to an Olympics, with greater competition for spots on the women’s side, along with a men’s team that could push harder for the podium than it has in recent years.
Summer McIntosh was the first of Canada’s medal favourites to qualify for Paris on Monday, winning the 400-metre freestyle in a time of 3:59.06, the first of several events she will race this week. Though Ms. McIntosh wasn’t satisfied with the race, her time was the fastest in the world this season, ahead of Australian Ariarne Titmus, who swam 3:59.13 last month.
“It’s definitely great to qualify the first night to get the deal sealed, so just pushing forward to my next races,” Ms. McIntosh said.
Julie Brousseau, considered a future cog on the team, narrowly missed the Olympic cut-off in the 400m freestyle, placing second in a time of 4:08.12.
Maggie Mac Neil, who won gold in Tokyo in the 100m butterfly, clinched that event Monday in a time of 56.61, earning what is expected to be the first of several spots for her in Paris. Mary-Sophie Harvey placed second in 57.31, also qualifying for an Olympic spot.
Ms. Mac Neil said it was good to get the first qualification out of the way and set the tone for the week. The trials wrap up on Sunday, when the team will be finalized.
“Being the first day obviously you’re fresher, but it’s also like you don’t know how the meet’s going to go, how you’re feeling, so it can go both ways, but I’m pretty happy with today over all,” Ms. Mac Neil said.
Backstroke specialist and four-time Olympic medalist Kylie Masse, who races later in the week in a bid for her third Games, said she’s been impressed by the progression of the program over the past decade, where winning medals has gone from being an outlier to the new norm.
“It wasn’t like that before, and it’s amazing for the sport in Canada,” Ms. Masse said. “To be competing against the best swimming countries in the world and to be one of the best swimming countries in the world, I think it’s an incredible feat.”
Swimming Canada high-performance director John Atkinson is aware of the pressure the program has brought upon itself with its recent success, and how that will only compound in France. But the emergence of generational talents such as Ms. McIntosh and Penny Oleksiak, who became the country’s most decorated Olympian after winning her seventh medal three years ago in Tokyo, has reconfigured how Canada sees swimming – and how the world sees Canada.
“When I came in early 2013, just after the London Games, it really was about building,” Mr. Atkinson said.
“Never did we talk about, ‘We’re coming here to win eight medals.’ We always talked about improvement, then progression.”
For the past few years, the swimmers have been scattered around the world, training across Canada, the United States and Europe. Bringing the team together under one roof, and one objective, is the goal of this week’s Olympic trials, Mr. Atkinson said.
“I’m looking forward to everybody being on the same track, having a group that are now all focused,” he said.