Wallaceburg’s Madison Broad is hoping her Olympic dream turns into a reality this week, as the 15-year-old Chatham Y Pool Sharks swimmer competes in the Olympic trials in Toronto.
“It is nerve racking honestly,” Broad told the Sydenham Current.
“To be this young and trying to go for a medal in this meet. I just have to push as hard as I can.”
Broad is competing in the 100-metre backstroke on Wednesday and the 200-metre backstroke on Saturday.
The Wallaceburg teen says her first event is her best shot at cracking the Olympic roster.
“The 100 back is my best event here,” she said.
“It’s kind of stressful because I need to make an ‘A’ final, but I’m seeded fourteenth. So I have to take off time to get into an ‘A’ final.”
Broad said the top 10 times in the preliminaries will make it into the final.
“I have worked up my endurance in the past three months and I’ve also been working on my underwater kicks off my walls,” Broad said.
The Olympic trials are used to choose Canadian teams for the Junior Pan Pacific Championships being held from August 24 to 27 in Maui, Hawaii, for the FINA world short-course championships being held in Windsor from December 6 to 11, and for the Arena Pro Swim Series meet being held June 3-5 in Indianapolis.
To make the Canadian team for the Olympic Games – being held August 5 to 21 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – Broad needs to place in the top two at the trials and meet the FINA ‘A’ time standard.
“It’s a possibility I will just have to knock off a lot of time,” Broad said.
Already spending a couple of days in Toronto, Broad said things are going well so far.
“It’s going really good, my taper is working really well… I feel great.”
Broad said she had one practice a day, which consists of a warm-up, a couple of sprints and then a cool down.
Her coach, Kyle Pinsonneault is at the meet with her.
“It has been the whole coaching staff that has put in the time to help Maddy prepare for this,” he posted to a Madison Broad Fan Club page that has been started on Facebook. “Big day tomorrow, but after seeing how she swam today, we are on the right track. She looked awesome in the water this morning at practice.”
Broad has been looking great in the water the past few months.
The Grade 10 UCC student competed in Speedo Eastern championships in Montreal in February – capturing two gold medals – and also at the Grand Prix in Orlando at the beginning of March. At the Florida event she competed against and met Olympians, such as four-time Olympic gold medallist Missy Franklin and 12-time Olympic medallist Natalie Coughlin.
“There was a lot of fast people there that I hadn’t met before,” she said.
“It was really warm and it was kind of like an outdoor pool, which was weird. Sometimes it was really hot, and sometimes it was really cold.”
After watching some of the Olympic swimmers at the Grand Prix, Broad said she is confident she can reach that level.
“I learned that I could totally beat them in the future, if I really wanted to,” she said.
“Just watching them swim, I’m just sitting there thinking… I could do that. It’s possible.”
Broad said to get to that level, she needs to continue staying focused on her training.
Her training routine at home consists of swimming two hours before school some days, an hour after school on others, and both before and after school on some days as well.
* Watch for more coverage of Madison at the Olympic time trials on the Sydenham Current, you can also catch the swimming action here on the CBC.
Good luck Madison!!!