August 12, 2004
Canadian divers reminded of Olympic Games
every time they look down
Donna Spencer
ATHENS (CP) - If the Canadian diving team thought they could shut out the pressure of the Olympic Games by pretending it was just another competition, forget it.
When the divers step to the end of the 10-metre tower at the Olympic Aquatic Centre and look down, the words "Athens 2004" covering the entire bottom of the diving tank stare back at them.
"When we got here, I think it was Chris (Kalec), Myriam (Boileau) and I were kind of looking at that thing and Myriam goes 'Once you've really gone in your bubble and forgot you were at the Games and stuff, you're kind of screwed because you get it at the end there,"' Alexandre Despatie said after a training session Thursday. "It's right in your face and you can't forget it."
Despatie, a gold-medal contender in both the 10-metre tower and the springboard, said there was no point trying denial anyway.
"It's not the sign, but you can't forget you're at the Olympics because it's so big," he said. "You just can't. The thing is really to accept it and say 'there really will be a lot of people, there will be a lot of cameras, there will be a lot of this and that' and just deal with it."
Canada's six-member diving team is looking to produce gold for Canada at the Athens Games with much of the focus on 19-year-old Despatie of Laval, and 22-year-old Emilie Heymans of St-Lambert, the defending world champion on the women's tower.
Blythe Hartley of North Vancouver, B.C., has a shot at the podium in the springboard, Boileau of Montreal is capable of finishing top six in tower, and Montreal's Philippe Comtois and Kalec of Laval, are aiming for the finals, which makes this diving team the deepest Canada has sent to an Olympic Games. "They certainly know what's available to them," national coach Mitch Geller said. "They're trying to de-emphasize it and not try not to focus on outcomes. That seems to be the approach that is most encouraged by psychologists and the like."
But Geller says the divers are feeling the pressure.
"They're really sensitized to anything that doesn't go according to plan," he said. "We really just talk about being adaptable. Not all the dives are going to go as planned. Some are going to be better than they expected, some are going to be worse."
The diving opens Saturday with synchronized events in the women's springboard and men's tower.
While Canada's chances at medals in synchro are less than in the individual events, that didn't stop the mind games from commencing Thursday when the Canadians trained with mighty Chinese for the first time at these Games.
The Chinese are to diving like the Kenyans are to running, but the Canadians have begun to share in that mystique in recent years.
Geller described Despatie's training the last month as "almost magical."
But Despatie wasn't sharp on his first attempts on each dive Thursday. He showed his frustration by slapping his hand on the water, but he was then able to re-focus and make improvements on subsequent attempts.
"What was good about it was every first dive of every dive was a little shaky but I stayed really focused and made the changes when I had to," he said. "This afternoon I was feeling a little bit tired, but I was still able to make those changes."
Michel Larouche, who coaches Despatie and four other Olympic divers at CAMO in Montreal, was pleased at Despatie's concentration and attributed his emotion to the presence of the Chinese divers, saying the two countries' competitors were conscious of each other.
"We could see by the end of the practice, the Chinese started to miss a little bit," Larouche said. "It's a game of who is going to impress the others."
"They don't know how we train, we don't know how they train."
Despatie's main rivals on the tower, in which he is the world champion, are Tian Liang and Hu Jia, who finished 1-2 at the Olympics four years ago. The Chinese are tiny with stomach muscles that ripple. They seem to float off the tower.
But the men's tower battle won't happen until the second-last day of the Games. The first week of the Games has a light diving schedule.
Despatie and Comtois compete in the synchronized 10-metre event and Heymans and Hartley are in the women's synchro springboard event Saturday.
Heymans and Hartley team up again for Monday's synchronized tower event. The individual women's tower preliminaries, which will feature Heymans and Boileau, don't start until Aug. 20.
The Canadian team minus Heymans and Boileau will return to their off-site training base in Patras, which is about 200 kilometres outside of Athens, for four days following Monday's synchronized event.
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