Olympic trials can be greatest pressure cooker for Canadian swimmers

The pressure of making Team Canada can be greater than the stress of competing at the Olympic Games for many athletes competing at the Canadian Olympic and Para-swimming Trials, Tuesday to Sunday at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre.

• SCHEDULE: Watch the swimming trials on CBC

It's a huge test for Canada's top swimmers as they compete for Olympic spots, knowing that failure will mean another four years of waiting.

The task is brutally simple: To make the team for Rio, swimmers must touch first or second and have achieved a qualifying time (relays and para-swimmers qualify a bit differently).

"Olympic Trials is the most nerve-racking, stressful event I've ever been at," said Scott Dickens, who swam at four trials and made the 2004 and 2012 Olympic teams. His best finish was 16th at the London Olympics.

Dickens believes the pressure at a trials exceeds what many athletes feel at the Olympic Games. The trials this week are a pass or fail checkpoint on the road to Rio. Especially for those who have never been to an Olympics, qualification is the realization of a childhood dream.

Missing the team means four more years of waiting, or possibly never going.

"It makes or breaks you," said Dickens, who is now retired but remains the national record holder in 50-metre and 100-metre breaststroke.

Olympians are a revered group within the sport. Many a Canadian record holder has failed to succeed at the trials.  

This do-or-die situation ensures the athlete can respond to pressure, and the qualifying time is part of a Swimming Canada strategy to send swimmers to Rio who can compete when it counts the most. The qualifying times are equal to the 16th-place time from preliminaries at London 2012, or what it took to make a semifinal.

There have been 'win-and-you're-in' trials in the past, but not this time, and it's very unlikely the country will qualify a full team of 26 men and 26 women.   

Stepping stone for some

Medal-contending swimmers such as Ryan Cochrane view the trials differently than those who stand no shot at a podium  finish in Rio. "If you can't do it at trials," Cochrane said, "what are the chances you're going to be able to take another step up for the Olympics where the pressure is 10-times more."

While the expectations may become reduced on swimmers whose ultimate goal was to merely make the team, the 27-year-old Cochrane is one of the rare national team members expected to challenge for a medal in Rio.

He won a bronze in 2008 and a silver in 2012, both in the 1500-metre freestyle.

Cochrane is attempting to qualify for his third Olympics and still respects the beast of the qualifying meet. "It's as much mental as it is physical," he said.

Always surprises

David Sharpe was a relative unknown back in 2012. He was a good varsity swimmer with the Dalhousie Tigers and had limited national team experience. He qualified for the last spot in the 200-metre butterfly final.   

Sharpe won the final from lane eight (a rare feat in swimming) and became Nova Scotia's first male Olympic swimmer. "Because I wasn't supposed to make it, there was nothing to lose [at the Olympics], you just go for it," he said.

"I've been through four Olympic trials, two were awesome and two were horrible," said Annamay Pierse, a 2008 Olympian who has experienced both euphoria and heartbreak. "You have one day and one race, and that's it."

In 2012, Pierse was the world record holder in the 200-metre breaststroke but failed to make the team.

"Olympic trials can be the best day of your life and the absolute worst," she said.