Canada Artistic Swimming announces 2020-2021 Full-Time Olympic Training Group

19 athletes to start training full-time in Montréal in September

Canada Artistic Swimming is proud to announce the athletes who will form the 2020-2021 Olympic Training Group scheduled to start training full-time in September at Montreal’s Institut National du Sport (INS).

In addition to the 12 members of the 2019-2020 Senior National Team, the reigning FINA World Series and Pan American Games champions, 7 new athletes have been invited to join the group as they start preparing for the 2021 World Series and the postponed Tokyo Olympics.

“We’re excited that we’ve been able to add a new group of dedicated athletes to our already very talented high performance training group”, shared Judi Enns Bradette, CAS President. “As we prepare for Tokyo in 2021 and start laying the foundation for the 2024 Olympics, we’re proud to have established a solid program that will continue to breed success going forward.”

The athletes, who have been following a rigid training regimen from home since the cancellation of last season, have been able to gain access to in-water training over the past few weeks as provinces start opening up facilities. The group will continue training virtually for a month under the leadership of Head Coach Gabor Szauder and assistants Kasia Kulesza and Karine Doré until they rejoin their full-time training environment in Montreal on September 17.

“We can’t wait to get this new group together”, said Coach Szauder. “We’ve been able to focus on developing athleticism with our athletes during the forced hiatus, and we’re very excited to see our progress translate in the water. The fact that there will now be 2 Olympic Games within 3 years, together with multiple junior and senior World Championships, has created new challenges for which we’ll be better prepared with a larger group of full-time athletes.”

“The team of twelve athletes that won the 2019 FINA World Series and then qualified Canada for the Tokyo Olympics have already established a standard of excellence for the senior national team”, he added. “They’ve formed a family that will welcome new members, and we are expecting a positive and extremely competitive daily training environment that will further develop athletes and routines that continue to close the gap between us and the countries ahead of us.”

CAS Chief Sport Officer Julie Healy is especially pleased to have been able to design a training environment that will address the need to prepare a squad for the upcoming Olympics while also keeping an eye on the future.

“Although the pandemic has delayed the Olympics by a year, we are still moving forward as planned with the addition of new athletes to the full-time training group in the fall of 2020, which is now not only our final year of preparation for the Tokyo Olympics, but also year one of the Paris Olympics quadrennial.  The quality of individuals being added to our training group is a reflection of the many individuals who have positively impacted these athletes throughout their artistic swimming careers. We appreciate and are grateful to all of the clubs, club coaches and provincial programs that have contributed to their development.”

The 19 members of the Full-Time Olympic Training Group are: