B.C. has won the bronze medal as Canada’s 338-athlete team to the 2024 Paris Olympics was officially finalized Tuesday.
Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, leads with 141 athletes on the list with Quebec second with 58 and B.C. third with 45, with several from the Island.
Rounding out the list is Alberta with 34, Nova Scotia with 10, Saskatchewan with nine, Manitoba with six, New Brunswick with three and Prince Edward Island with two. Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut failed to place an athlete on the team.
The youngest member of the team is skateboarder Fay De Fazio Ebert, 14, and the oldest is equestrian Jill Irving, 61.
The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree as there are 10 members of the Canadian team for Paris who are the offspring of Olympians. That list includes University of Victoria Vikes graduate rower Avalon Wasteneys of Campbell River, whose mom Heather Clarke rowed in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
Others include basketball players R.J. Barrett, whose dad Rowan Barrett played alongside Canadian captain Steve Nash of Victoria in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, whose mother Charmaine Gilgeous ran track for Antigua at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Point-guard Syla Swords, in Victoria this month for the women’s pre-Olympic basketball team training camp, will join her dad and 2000 Sydney cager Shawn Swords as an Olympian.
There will be 174 Canadian Olympic rookies in Paris, including medal-threats such as world-champion hammer-thrower Ethan Katzberg of Nanaimo, surfer Sanoa Dempfle-Olin of Tofino and Victoria cyclists Sara Van Dam and Erin Attwell.
“Qualifying felt surreal when it first happened. It’s definitely starting to feel a lot more real now,” said racewalker Olivia Lundman of Lantzville, who will be another Olympic rookie.
The rookie list includes 30-year-old-plus Victoria athletes Jeremy Bagshaw in swimming and Adam Keenan in hammer, who will finally become Olympians after years of sweat and qualifying heartbreak.
At the other end of the Canadian experience scale in Paris will be 38 Olympic medallists, including Island rowers Wasteneys and Caileigh Filmer — gold and bronze medallists respectively at Tokyo 2020 — and Langford-based rugby player and 2016 Rio Olympics bronze-medallist Charity Williams.
“It feels surreal — a 10 year journey that is still going. I feel lucky to still be here in Victoria training and to still be on the national team with all these young players,” said Williams, during the Canadian Sport Institute-Pacific’s Olympic send-off event held recently in Victoria.
The floating opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games will take place July 26 on the Seine.
