180-day road between Tokyo, Beijing Olympics leads dual-sport athletes down different paths

A dual-sport Olympic athlete who participates in both the Summer and Winter Olympics usually will have 18 months to train between Games. But the global pandemic has reduced that already gruelling task to a mere 180 days.

There were three athletes who competed in Tokyo in July/August this past summer who had previously competed in the 2018 Winter Olympics and had realistic chances of doing it again in Beijing.

Vincent De Haître of Canada (cycling and speed skating), Ayumu Hirano of Japan (skateboard and snowboard), and Pita Taufatofua of Tonga (taekwondo and cross-country skiing) all competed in Tokyo and had an opportunity to represent their countries just six months later in Beijing.

But the paths these three athletes took after the Tokyo Olympics concluded diverged significantly.

De Haître grinds through unusual training cycle

Already a two-time Winter Olympian in 2014 and 2018 in both the 1000m and 1500m long track speed skating events, De Haître helped Canada's cyclists set a personal best time in the team pursuit and finish fifth at the Tokyo Olympics. 

Being a two-sport athlete takes a toll on the body, and the six-month turnaround had repercussions for the 27-year-old De Haître.

It was a year before the Tokyo Olympics that De Haître decided he wanted to try to qualify in cycling, a sport he'd been competing in internationally for seven years.

WATCH | De Haître embarks on journey to participate in Summer and Winter Olympics 6 months apart:

Tokyo Today: Vincent De Haître

4 years ago

Duration 1:14

Two-time Olympian Vincent De Haître of Cumberland, Ont., says splitting his time between 2 sports, speed skating and track cycling, can be a challenge but that's what makes it so much fun.

As De Haître wrote in May of 2020, he wanted to "face this hurdle head on and bet on myself as an athlete", training for both sports and communicating with both national teams to achieve his goal of competing in both Games.

"When I see him doing the warm-ups and everything, my mind immediately goes, 'Oh, he's doing some weird speed-skating stretches or something'," teammate Derek Gee told Radio-Canada. "He's definitely a very different athlete than any of us [on the cycling team]. I wouldn't so much call him an outsider because he's very versed in cycling. 

"He's been cycling all his life, we were teammates together when we were really young, but he certainly has a different pathway than anyone else."

That pathway was a short one on the road to Beijing.

It started in Calgary at the 2021 Canadian long track championships in October, where De Haître battled through a pulled groin he suffered in warm-ups to finish second, an unthinkable feat considering he hopped off his bicycle at the Olympics just 72 days earlier.

"He was a little bit ahead of what we were expecting," Bart Schouten, a coach of Canada's long track speed skating team, told Radio-Canada after first seeing De Haître back on the ice. "At the trials in October he out-skated some people that we knew were skating really, really well."

WATCH | De Haître ramps up for Winter Games:

Beijing Today: Vincent De Haître

3 years ago

Duration 1:38

Vincent De Haître, the multi-sport athlete and three-time Olympian from Ottawa, is no stranger competing on the world's biggest stage.

"After leaving speed skating for three years, I went the distance with the best this country has and finished second at the Canadian Championships,'' said De Haître on his Instagram after being named a non-travelling alternate to the 2022 Olympic team. "My World Cup results just weren't what they needed to be, leaving me as the alternate for the 2022 Olympic Games.

"That is a victory to me! I took on an impossible challenge and fought well all the way."

Ayumu Hirano launches into Beijing

Twenty-three-year-old Hirano accomplished a dream nearly 20 years in the making when he dropped in on his skateboard during the Tokyo Olympics.

"Now that skateboarding has become an official event for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, I could not just let it go," said Hirano to asahi.com in November 2018, just nine months after securing his second silver medal in snowboard at the PyeongChang Games.

With the Tokyo Games being pushed back a year, it did give him extra time to prepare for the inaugural skateboarding event at the Olympics, but it also delayed the start of his training for Beijing, something he had ample opportunity to do when preparing for both the 2014 and 2018 Games.

"There is not a single day to waste", said Hirano to Olympics.com, less than a month after the Tokyo Games. "But I don't feel like I'm up against anyone. I feel like this is about challenging myself."

Nevertheless, the Murakami native still enters the halfpipe competition as one of the favourites, alongside Australian Scotty James, Japan's Yuto Totsuka, and 2018 American gold medal-winner Shaun White. He'll also be competing against his two younger brothers, Kaishu and Ruka.

"For a while, I have been away from snowboarding," Hirano told USA Today after finishing 14th in skateboard qualifying in Tokyo. "Everyone is at their highest level, and how I am going to recover is a challenge."

The snowboarding prodigy has quickly warmed up heading into Beijing, landing the first ever triple cork on the Dew Tour in December, along with securing silver at the X Games at the end of January.

Bare-chested flag-bearer bears noble cause in 2022

The shirtless Tongan flag-bearer who has made his presence known at each of the last three Olympic opening ceremonies unfortunately did not reprise his role on Friday, but it was for an honourable reason.

On Jan. 15, the Polynesian nation of Tonga was devastated by the eruption of an underwater volcano, causing damage to the archipelago and cutting off communication to the country, delaying relief efforts.

WATCH | Eruption of underwater volcano devastates Tonga:

New images show extensive damage from Tonga volcano eruption

3 years ago

Duration 3:43

Reconnaissance flights from Australia and New Zealand have revealed the extent of the damage in Tonga from Saturday's massive volcanic eruption and tsunami. Damage to the airport and communications cables are hampering relief efforts.

With the Beijing Games on the horizon, the direction for one of just two Tongan athletes to ever compete at the Winter Olympics was clear. Taufatofua quickly took to social media and started a fundraiser, which to date has achieved more than $800,000 AUD of its $1 million goal.

The three-time Olympian swiftly turned the platform that the Games provided him since he first participated at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro into a vehicle to raise awareness about the natural disaster.

"I got a message from a lady in Japan, and she said 'You waved to me at the Tokyo Olympics and now I'm returning the favour [by donating]'," said Taufatofua to Olympics.com in mid-January. "And I sat there and I thought, I waved. I need to start waving to everyone."

While the Olympics are on the back burner for the 38-year-old, they are certainly not out of mind.

"Right now my focus is on making sure that we can help with the Tonga rebuild and then and then my energies will move back to the Olympics," he told Olympics.com.