PARIS — With au revoir bid to the fabulously compelling 2024 Paris Olympic Games, here are 10 Island athletes, plus a bonus one, to watch for as potential Olympic rookies at the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
They will be about as close to a ‘home’ Summer Olympics, in the same time zone, as Island athletes will get. And who knows, Tom Cruise might still be fit enough to jump from the roof of SoFi Stadium in the opening ceremony in 2028 to reprise his closing ceremony role Sunday at the Stade de France.
The only stipulation for this list is that an athlete not have previously competed in the Olympics:
CASEY WILSON: The field version, sixes to be exact, will mark lacrosse’s first return to the Olympic Games as a medal sport since 1904 and 1908 when Canada won both times. Lacrosse was an Olympic demonstration sport at Amsterdam in 1928, Los Angeles in 1932, London in 1948 and also at the 1994 Victoria Commonwealth Games. The Victoria Shamrocks’ young star Wilson, who made the NCAA Final Four this season in field lacrosse with the University of Denver, is looking primed to represent Canada in 2028 at Los Angeles.
MATHEA DEMPFLE-OLIN: Everyone thought the older Tofino sister would get there first but baby sister Sanoa Dempfle-Olin became the first Canadian to surf in the Olympic Games, at Paris 2024, on the iconic waves known as the Wall of Skulls in Teahupo’o, Tahiti. Huntington Beach at L.A. 28 could be calling for the equally talented Mathea.
SOPHIE DE GOEDE: An ill-timed injury kept the all-world Oak Bay Secondary grad out of Canada’s riveting run to the women’s rugby sevens silver medal at Paris 2024 but the program will be built around her for 2028.
JACK WALKEY: The rower out of Claremont Secondary, who stroked in the NCAA for the University of Washington Huskies, missed by the narrowest of margins getting to Paris 2024 with the Canadian men’s eight. Walkey is who the program will build around for Los Angeles 2028.
ANNA MOLLENHAUER: Her mother, Nancy, played field hockey in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. How poetic would it be for her daughter Anna, a current national team star out of SMUS and UVic, to follow her there 44 years later?
HARBIR SIDHU: On the men’s side, this Mount Douglas Secondary graduate is considered one of Canada’s most electrifying young field-hockey talents.
LUKE DE GREEFF: The six-foot-four hitter out of Lambrick Park Secondary, with the pile-driving spikes, has been named to the national beach volleyball team at age 22 and will be eyeing the sun and sand of Southern California in 2028.
THANA FAYAD: The high-elevating, six-foot-two outside-hitter out of Oak Bay Secondary played NCAA Div. 1 at the University of San Diego and is on the Canadian national team development radar.
RENEE BATALLA: The Victoria Boardworks diver was Canada’s youngest athlete, at age 15, in the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games and will be rounding into her own by L.A. 2028. It was just a little too early for Paris. “It would [have been] amazing to make the Paris 2024 Olympics at 17 years old. But if I miss them, I believe I will make Los Angeles 2028,” she has told the Times Colonist.
ETHAN FLYNN-PITCHER and MICHAEL FINN-HENRY: The spidery Boulders Gym climbers are whip-saw quick up that wall in Central Saanich. They were close but could not climb to Paris. Now L.A. beckons if they have it in mind to put in four more years.
