Run, lift, and pull—Canada’s Olympic scouts will do the rest

If you or someone you know thinks they have the right stuff to become an Olympian, they can find out next Saturday when Canada’s official Olympic talent search—the RBC Training Ground—visits UVic’s CARSA Field House.

“If I had known about this when I was in the age range, I would have been all about it,” says program spokesperson Larissa Franklin, from Maple Ridge.

Franklin, who won bronze with Canada’s softball team at the 2020 Tokyo Games, wasn’t in that 14-to-25 age range when she first heard of the program, but she knows what the first step is to competing on the world stage.

“Just by having the courage and being willing to take the risk and putting yourself out there,” she says. “Those are all qualities that I think make Olympic athletes.”

At RBC Training Ground’s free qualifying events, athletes are tested for speed, strength, power, and endurance—and they do it in front of scouts from 16 winter and summer national sports organizations.

The top 100 are invited to a national final, where up to 35 will earn RBC Future Olympian status, which gives them funding and other resources to further develop in their sport.

In its 10 years, the program has produced 28 Olympians, with 12 accounting for 14 medals. That includes Campbell River’s Avalon Wasteneys, who joined in 2017 and rowed to gold at Tokyo 2020, and silver four years later in Paris.

Last year, Claremont Secondary student Tyce Chappel was scouted as having potential in luge. Vikes soccer player Adam Scott was redirected from the pitch to the skeleton sliding centre.

Victoria’s Liam Hallett was a junior hockey goalie before being pegged as a possible rower, just like his dad, Todd, who represented Canada at three Olympic Games.

The RBC Training Ground has discovered potential in more than 20,000 athletes, including 11 who competed for Canada at the most recent Olympic Games in Italy.

The Victoria qualifier runs from 2pm to 4:30pm.

‍ Register right here.