Olivier Poirier-Leroy is a former national level swimmer based out of Victoria, BC. In feeding his passion for swimming, he has developed YourSwimBook, a powerful log book and goal setting guide made specifically for swimmers. Sign up for the YourSwimBook newsletter (free) and get weekly motivational tips by clicking here.
The Canadian senior national team are going to have a busy summer this year. First stop will be Glasgow, Scotland for the Commonwealth Games in just under a month, and then off to Australia’s Gold Coast August 21-25 for the Pan Pacific Championships. Familiar names such as Cochrane, Caldwell and Savard will head a team that is equal part veteran (19 returning swimmers with national team experience), and newbies (18 fresh faces on their first national team).
Here are three Canadians to keep an eye on this summer:
Yuri Kisil
At the Canadian Trials this past April Cascade Swimming’s Yuri Kisil won both sprint freestyle events, qualifying him for both Pan Pac and Commonwealth squads later this summer.
The youngest Canadian to break the 50 second mark ever, Kisil dropped 1.35 seconds in winning his first national title. He would follow that up a couple days later on the final night of competition to win the 50m freestyle, also in a personal best time of 22.53.
With two national titles under his belt, and his first major international games coming up this summer, the future is looking bright for the laid back Kisil, who is known as the “Interconitnental Ballistic Kisil” by his compatriots within Calgary-based Cascade Swimming.
At the trials he had the most entertaining of the post-race interviews. When veteran announcer Chris Hindmarch-Watson interviewed Kisil after winning the 100m free, he was asked what was next for the young up and comer. After a well timed pause, Kisil looked up and said, “The sky is the limit.”
After this summer Kisil is making a move west to the University of British Columbia. The surroundings should be familiar enough; his current coach Dave Johnson’s brother Tom is the head coach in Vancouver. UBC is also where Canadian sprint star Brent Hayden honed his Olympic medal winning skill, so Kisil will have some familiar tracks to glide along.
Brittany MacLean
MacLean has had a monster year already.
On the final night of Canadian Trials she destroyed the Canadian record in the 800m freestyle, lowering Brittany Reimer’s 2005 national record by nearly three seconds. Perhaps what was most impressive about her swim was that it was coming off of the heels of a successful NCAA performance, where she hammered the NCAA record in the 1650 yard free (and breaking the 1000-yard free record during the mile) while leading the Bulldogs to a second straight NCAA title.
She is recently coming off of a solid swim in Santa Clara, where she picked up a couple silver medals, including in the 400 freestyle where she swam a 4:07.23.
MacLean isn’t short on international experience – she finaled in London in the 400 free and was on the 4th place finishing 4×200 free relay – and this summer’s Pan Pacific Championships will give her an awesome opportunity to measure up against the United States’ Katie Ledecky, who has been busy having a monster year of her own.
Evan White
Canada has performed well on the international stage in the individual medley over the years. Alex Baumann was the world record holder during the 1980’s in both IM’s, while Curtis Myden won 3 bronze medals at three successive Olympics, the most recent in the 400 IM at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
Evan White, a member of the Oakville Aquatic Club and a University of Michigan commit, is looking to add to the IM legacy. This year he has been on fire, breaking 5 NAG records in December at the Thunderbolt Invitational in December, before qualifying for his first senior national teams this past April at Canadian Trials.
At that meet White would come close to beating Keith Beavers 2008 national record of 1:59.18. For 150m the 18 year old would be under pace for the mark, before fading on the freestyle leg to touch in 1:59.84.
He is going to be in tough against the Australians at the Commonwealth Games in Scotland, with Daniel Tranter and Thomas Fraser-Holmes both posting 1:57’s at their own trials in April. Pan Pacs will be even tougher, with the addition of the Americans and the Japanese, led by Kosuke Hagino who has the world’s fastest time this year so far at 1:55.38.
Between spending the next few years with the Wolverines in Ann Arbor, who have a fine tradition of pumping out world class IM’ers, and his club program under Sean Baker at Oakville, White has a bright future ahead of him.
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Oh come on, no Ryan Cochrane on the list? Or is his place on the podium so assured that you feel there’s no need to watch?
Catherine – Olivier actually had Ryan on his list, but I sort of re-directed this more toward “the new stories” or the swimmers who haven’t had their story told many times, or have an exciting new page to their story like MacLean.
Cochrane will surely have plenty written about him in the coming months.