(Montreal) All eyes will be on Katie Vincent during the Paris Games, as the Ontarian will aim for a second Olympic medal and will be the leader of a canoe-kayak sprint team combining youth and experience.
Three Quebecers will be part of the Canadian team in Paris. Sophia Jensen, of Chelsea, and Laurent Lavigne, of Trois-Rivières, will be making their first appearance at the Olympic Games, while Pierre-Luc Poulin, of Lac-Beauport, will be back after obtaining a 10th place in K-4500 meters in Tokyo in 2021.
“I think our team had good results at last year’s Worlds and at the recent World Cup,” said Canadian Canoe Kayak Federation technical director Ian Mortimer. I think our group is on the right track. »
Vincent, from Mississauga, won bronze in the C-2500 meters alongside Quebecer Laurence Vincent-Lapointe in Tokyo. She repeated this performance by teaming up with young Sloan MacKenzie, of Windsor Junction, Nova Scotia, at the Worlds last summer in Germany. The two Canadians then won silver at the World Cup in Hungary in May.
Then in the C-1200 meters, Vincent triumphed at the recent World Cup, just ahead of Jensen.
It was Jensen’s first World Cup medal. The 22-year-old is the rising star of the Canadian program, having won six junior world titles in 2018 and 2019.
“The step from junior to senior level is high, but her recent World Cup medal shows she continues to progress,” Mortimer said. She has the potential to get on the podium [in Paris]. »
During the 2021 Tokyo Games, Vincent-Lapointe became the first Quebecer since Caroline Brunet at the Athens Games in 2004 to win a medal in the canoe-kayak sprint events.
In addition to her medal in C-2500 meters with Vincent, Vincent-Lapointe, now retired, also won bronze in C-1200 meters. These two medals helped relaunch the Canadian canoe-kayak sprint program after a rare exclusion from the podium during the previous Summer Games in Rio, in 2016.
From the Games in Atlanta in 1996 to those in London in 2012, Canada had won at least one medal in this discipline, accumulating a total of 11 medals, including one gold, during this period.
Happy to realize a dream by representing Canada at the Olympic Games for the first time, Jensen is not putting pressure on her shoulders for Paris.
“I’m still very young and I just want to do my best,” said in French the Alberta native who moved to Chelsea with her parents at the age of 10 and has been training at the Cascades club since age 12.
“The result is important, yes, but I just want to do the best race possible and be happy with what I’m doing,” she added.
Jensen will have her work cut out to defeat Vincent at the C-1200 meters in Paris, but she is happy to have the 28-year-old veteran by her side.
“I think she’s the best in the world right now,” Jensen said. She forces me to surpass myself and it’s fun to fight with her. »
For their part, Lavigne and Poulin will team up with Ontarians Simon McTavish, from Oakville, and Nick Matveev, from North York, in the K-4500 meters.
Lavigne is the new kid in the group, while Poulin, McTavish and Matveev teamed up in Tokyo with veteran Mark De Jonge, who has since hung up his paddle.
The quartet finished in ninth position at the World Cup in Hungary last month.
Besides Jensen and Vincent, Michelle Russell is perhaps Canada’s other top medal hope in Paris. Russell, of Dartmouth, N.S., finished fourth in the K-1,500 metres in Hungary last month.
Connor Fitzpatrick of Dartmouth will represent Canada in the C-1, 1000 metres. Toshka Besharah-Hrebacka of Ottawa, Natalie Davison of Manotick, Ont., Riley Melanson of Dartmouth, and Courtney Stott of Pickering, Ont., will team up in the women’s K-4500 meters.