Canada's Fab IV aiming for heroic results in the diving pool

When Canadian Olympic diver Roseline Filion broke her ankle during a practice session last December, she didn't even realize it. That task fell to her long-time diving partner, Meaghan Benfeito.

"I didn't hear it crack," Filion recalls. "Meaghan heard it."

Such is the closeness of the diving duo from Quebec. Even injuries are detected by the other one first.

Filion and Benfeito have trained together for 11 years, longer than any two Olympians on the planet. They shop together, dine together and have practised thousands of synchronized dives together. In many ways, they are more like sisters than teammates, developing the kind of trust that is useful when it's time to leap off a three-storey tower and fall head-first into the water less than three seconds later.

"I know her more than I know my own sisters," Benfeito, 27, says of Filion, 29. "I can just look at her, stare at her, and we know exactly what it means."

The two want to transfer that chemistry to Rio de Janeiro when they compete in their third Olympics, part of a powerhouse Canadian women's diving squad that has its sights set on podium finishes.

Filion and Benfeito, as well as Jennifer Abel and Pamela Ware, hope to carry on an Olympic tradition that has seen Quebec divers bring home 10 Olympic medals since 1984, two of them at the previous Summer Games in London. Divers in the province are part-mentor and part-celebrity; from Sylvie Bernier to Alexandre Despatie and Émilie Heymans, they've provided inspiration to younger up-and-comers succeeding them. This year's Olympic team is no exception, with a mix of veterans and Olympic newcomers.

"We have never had a better-prepared team," says team leader Mitch Geller of Diving Canada.

They arrive in Rio with their own haul of heavy metal: 105 wins among them from various competitions since London. And they'll carry a little star aura with them, too. The four have enjoyed visibility in ads and glamour-shot Olympic promotions, and are even being marketed with the nickname the Fab IV (FAB for three of their surnames and IV as a stylized W for Ware).

All four are competing in both synchronized and individual events; the all-Quebec team is completed by Vincent Riendeau, Philippe Gagné and Maxim Bouchard.

Quebec's dominance in diving invites the question of what exactly the province puts in the water. It's not a magic potion. Aaron Dziver, one of four diving coaches working with the Olympic team, says the province has fostered high-performance training that grew out of the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal.

"Look," he said at Montreal's Olympic Park, pointing to the Olympic rings hanging on a wall over the pool where the athletes were training. "You've got the Olympic symbols there, day after day. It helps remind us what we're trying to achieve. There is huge history here."

He says Quebec puts money into developing Olympic-level athletes, and the Rio-bound divers benefited from the top-of-the-line facilities at Montreal's Olympic Park.

"Quebec is a distinct society which decided that we can distinguish ourselves in this way," says Dziver, a native of Winnipeg who moved to Montreal in 1999. "You have national teams working here, supported by a team of highly motivated medical and sports staff."

Geller calls it "the best training environment in the country."

"In Montreal and in Quebec, they invest, they go for it," Geller says. "You take a risk when you do that because you might not always win, and you won't always win. But we know that if you don't stick your neck out, there is no return."

"Here," he said in Montreal recently, "excellence is okay."

Translating that into medals in Rio will mean challenging strong women divers from Australia, Britain and especially China. "The Chinese are known for being extremely precise, very technically proficient and very strong," Dziver says. Still, three of the four Canadian women were medalists in London, and they're landing in Rio with new-found calm and maturity.

Abel was only 16 when she competed in Beijing in 2008 at her first Olympics. Now she's 24 and on her third Games. "I'm less excited about the idea of going to the Games and more excited that I'm going to achieve my personal goals," she says.

Both Filion and Benfeito also say they're better able to keep their cool with two Games to their names. Filion recalls being so nervous at her first Olympics that it was unpleasant not just for her, but the people around her.

"The difference this time is that I know exactly what to expect," says Filion, who has recovered from her ankle fracture.

Ware, who is heading to her first Olympics and is, at 23, the youngest woman on the team, says she's gaining from her more seasoned teammates.

All four say they are staying focused on the competition rather than the clamour over Rio's raft of woes, including the outbreak of the Zika virus, which is keeping some Olympic athletes from attending the Games. The four played down the risk of the virus and recalled that they competed at the FINA Diving World Cup in Rio in February, during what was then the hotter summer months.

"A lot of people are more worried than they should be. I'm not going to think about it," Benfeito says about Zika. "We're going to the Olympics no matter what."

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