Canadian diving team reboots for 2020 Olympic push

Caeli McKay will never forget the first time she spotted her idol, three-time Olympic medallist Meaghan Benfeito.

McKay was only 13 years old, and nervously warming up at her first senior nationals, in Quebec City.

"I remember getting there and jumping on the trampoline and seeing them and feeling so intimidated and so nervous," she says about Benfeito and other Olympic divers. "I kept doing backflips but all I could do was just stare at them."

At the time, the young Calgarian didn't know that Benfeito had taken notice of her, too.

"It was her and another little girl from Calgary as well, Aimee [Wilson], and they were both doing pretty big dives on [the] 10-metre [platform] at 12 or 13 years old," says Benfeito. "I was really impressed."

Today, almost four years later, McKay, 17, and Benfeito, 27, have become 10-metre synchronized diving partners.

This follows the recent retirement of the Montrealer's longtime teammate, Roseline Filion, with whom Benfeito won a pair of Olympic bronze medals in the 10m synchro.

• What will Meaghan Benfeito do without Roseline Filion?
• Filion on why she's done diving and what's next

McKay (pronounced Ma-KAI) is among a collection of young divers set to bolster an experienced and successful core as the national team begins the 2017 season, and a new Olympic quadrennial, on Friday in Rostock, Germany at the Grand Prix opener.

On the three-metre springboard, world and Olympic medallist Jennifer Abel, 25, is back for another Olympic cycle. 

She will also begin the season with a new synchro partner — 21 year old Mélissa Citrini-Beaulieu, from St. Constant, Que.

Montreal's Pamela Ware was Abel's partner at the 2016 Olympic Games, where they finished fourth in the 3m synchro event. Ware recently returned to the water following surgery for a stress fracture in her foot.  

Abel, from Laval, Que., was also fourth at the Rio Olympics in the individual 3m event.

"Being fourth was heartbreaking," Abel says. "It's not a secret for any athlete — nobody wants to be fourth. But that's the reason why I'm ready to come back for Tokyo [2020]. I can not finish like that."

On the men's side, 19-year-old Philippe Gagné​ and his good friend Vincent Riendeau, 20, both Rio Olympians, are aiming to climb the ladder at world events, alongside veteran ​François Imbeau-Dulac, 26.

Big expectations

It's a hopeful time for Canadian diving, especially on the women's 10-metre platform, where Canada won two medals in Rio.

"We create a culture of winning, we create a culture of working as hard as we can," says Arturo Miranda, one of Canada's national team coaches.

In Rio, Benfeito and Filion captured bronze for the second straight Olympics, and then Benfeito finished third in the individual event, a result she partially credits to Filion, her synchro partner and friend of 11 years.

McKay inherits a synchro teammate with a deep understanding of what makes a partnership work.

"We tend to have a relationship before an actual partnership," says Benfeito. "We care about who our synchro partner is and we make sure that they understand that we're there for each other."

McKay was chosen by Diving Canada as a successor for Filion.

"She's really talented," says Miranda, who believes it's now a matter of gaining the technical abilities to perform. 

McKay moved from Calgary to Montreal in March of 2016. She lived with Benfeito for five months, which helped ease the transition.

"She's like my big sister, it's not even like a best friend thing," says McKay, "She can boss me around and be like a big sister. It's really made it easier to live in Montreal without my family."

Benfeito is known to speak her mind, including when it comes to clarifying the relationship.

"She thought of me as more of an idol, but now I keep telling her that I'm not her idol anymore, I'm her synchro partner," says Benfeito, who adds (maybe half) jokingly: "She has to get that out of her head."