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The official double awarding this month of the 2024 and 2028 Summer Olympics to Paris and Los Angeles, respectively, was politically about the IOC jumping into the only two lifeboats it had left after several cities opted out of bidding.
But at least for elite teenage sportsmen and sportswomen, it has provided the targets to shoot for when they reach their primes. That includes 12-year-old Victoria diver Carson Paul, 14-year-old Tofino surfer Mathea Dempfle-Olin and 18-year-old Campbell River swimmer Mackenize Padington, who this month each received a $10,000 Petro-sa国际传媒 Fueling Athletes grant for potential future Olympians.
Meanwhile, the likes of 17-year-old Cowichan Bay triathlete Desirae Ridenour lit up the lakes, trails and roads this summer.
Among those many emerging Island athletes projected for the Paris 2024 and L.A. 2028 cycles is 18-year-old Victoria cyclist Erin Attwell, the Canadian junior road race champion and top-10 at the world junior championships in track pursuit.
But nobody said the journey there would be easy, as Attwell discovered with her 37th-place finish Saturday in the junior women鈥檚 road race at the 2017 UCI world road cycling championships in Bergen, Norway.
鈥淲hat a tough course . . . this was a race of attrition and many girls got popped on the first climb,鈥� said Attwell, from Bergen.
鈥淏y the third climb, a split had happened, which I didn鈥檛 see until I got to the front of my group and saw the girls up the road. It was a hard push trying to catch then. We caught smaller groups off that lead group but never saw the front of the race again. Canadian teammate Simone [Boilard] was in that lead group and she placed eighth after the winner [Elena Pirrone of Italy] got a solo break. I was the second Canadian rider over the line. It all comes down to experience, and I don鈥檛 have the races under my belt like some of these other girls do. I鈥檓 strong and so that is why I stayed with the main pack, but I have a lot of technical work to focus on now, including cornering and navigating the pack. Unfortunately, some races don鈥檛 pan out the way we could have hoped, but that鈥檚 bike racing.鈥�
Attwell鈥檚 greatest strength is in the velodrome, however, and she plans on centralizing with the national track team at the Canadian track cycling centre in Milton, Ont.
鈥淢y goal is the Olympics in track cycling,鈥� she said, last spring, upon graduating from the Canadian Sports School, which is operated by Canadian Sports Institute-Pacific at its PISE campus on Interurban Road in Saanich.
Several of the athletes likely to be competing in Paris 2024 and L.A. 2028 are attending the Canadian Sports School, under the auspices of School District 62, where they spend their afternoons in both academic and athletic training after attending their regular high schools in the morning.
