After all, 17-year-olds don’t usually find themselves a part of something as vast, as precedent-setting, as the 3,000-athlete inaugural World Youth Olympics. Or in a setting as far, far away from home in Lethbridge, both culturally and geographically, as Singapore.
Now, only days after that singular experience, the globe-trotting Rachel Nicol has reached the picture-postcard-pretty paradise of Kihei, Hawaii, on the south side of Maui, readying for the nearly-as-prestigious Junior Pan Pacific Swimming Championships.
It’s all been a dizzying whirl of indoctrination into the wading pool of high-performance athletics.
The most encouraging part?
She sounds utterly unfazed.
“No, everything’s been great. Fun. I really wasn’t sure what to expect there, this is such a big event, but our coach, Neil Harvey, told us before we competed: ‘You’re swimming a race. You’ve been involved in hundreds of them before. Relax. Go out and do what you know how to.’ ”
Nicol certainly took that advice to heart.
If her name might’ve drawn quizzical eyebrow-lifts as recently as a month ago, she certainly hit the general radar screen in a major way on the island country off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, winning gold in the 50-metre breaststroke in a personal best of 32:06, then adding silver in her signature distance, the 100, and as a vital component of the women’s 4×100 women’s relay team.
A quantum step up in class from, say, the Canada Games.
Then again, blood in Rachel Nicol’s case isn’t thicker than water. Water is in her blood. Her dad, Chris, competed for Scotland in the pool.
“What made the experience in Singapore really cool,” she says, “was being involved with a large Canadian team made up of all different sports. Not just swimming. That’s an amazing feeling. The pride of representing your country is something you always hear about. On the team there, you felt a true Team Canada spirit. Of being part of something really special.
“Obviously, everyone swims to win, so the 50 was very, very satisfying. But I was happy with all my races. In the 100, I wanted to go 1:09, so that was good. In the 200, I’d never broken 2:30 before. And the relay went really well.
“So I have no complaints.”
With the successes of the World Youth Olympics as a springboard, the trick now is to begin accelerating her improvement through increasingly difficult competitions, wedge her way into the senior national setup and then perform on the biggest stages the sport has to offer.
“It’s always a progression,” says Swimming Canada national team coach and CEO Pierre Lafontaine.
“What these kids have to realize is that the experience of something on the scope of a Youth Olympics is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
“They were a great learning tool, introducing the kids into a large, multi-sport competition, and competing against people from all over the world.”
It gives them a small feeling of how something as massive as an Olympic Games works.
“But as all of our young athletes will discover, improvement will be made on the hard days. The days when things go smoothly, they’re easy. It’s those early-practice days, when you’re tired, it’s snowing outside, you don’t want to get out of bed. Those are the sessions that make the difference in pushing yourself to be faster in the pool, tougher mentally.”
Right now, Nicol’s focus is only Thursday and the 100-metre breaststroke in the picture-postcard-pretty paradise of Kihei.
“Ultimately, the goal is obviously, to swim at an Olympic Games, in 2012 or 2016,” says Nicol. “But the great thing about swimming is that there’s so many high-calibre meets to prepare yourself and improve. Not just the Olympics. There’s senior Pan Pacs. The Commonwealth Games. The world championships. So many others. I know I’ve got a long ways to go.”
That way must seem at last somewhat shorter in the wake of Singapore.
“She’s a 1:08-1:09 (in the 100 breaststroke) now, so there’s no reason she can’t be 1:05 in a couple of years,” reasons Lafontaine. “So take a second off your every year. That’s the mission. And she’s more than capable of it.
“Rachel’s certainly one of the bright young swimmers we’re looking to for the future in women’s breaststroke.”
