Former Tay Township resident Kyla Rollinson has been named to the triathlon coaching staff to represent Canada at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, starting July 23.
“I will be lead coach on the women’s events, assistant coach on the men’s events, and we will co-coach the mixed team relay event, which is a new event at the games for triathlon,” Rollinson said during a phone interview from her Montreal residence.
Rollinson, along with coach Marc Antoine Christin, was nominated by the Canadian Olympic Committee on Wednesday to battle for the gold. Together, they will guide athletes Joanna Brown, Amélie Kretz, Tyler Mislawchuk, and Matt Sharpe during the endurance event which consists of swimming, cycling and running.
The history is strong between Rollinson and her athletes; she coached medal-hopeful Mislawchuk post-Olympics in 2017, and with Kretz as the first athlete Rollinson had ever coached, there’s a special resonance.
"This is very exciting for us, because this is not the end of a long journey,” Rollinson said. “We'd always dreamed of being at a Games together, and while I don't coach her personally anymore, we still have a good relationship. And so this is kind of exciting. Like, her mom wrote to me, and then she wrote to me right away when we both got the nomination.
"So those two in particular (Kretz and Mislawchuk), I have more of a personal connection with from a coaching standpoint, and the other two athletes are people that I've worked with more through a contract basis through Triathlon Canada."
High-performance triathlon is Rollinson’s bread and butter; she is the head coach and program co-ordinator at Collège Bourget in Rigaud, Que., and has coached at championship events across the world.
In 2018, Rollinson was the assistant coach on the national team at the Hong Kong Sports Institute, and she was the assistant junior coach for Canada at the world championships in 2014.
The Olympic experience will be gruelling. The athletes start their day before sunrise with a quick breakfast before using cycling trainers in their rooms, running in specified areas of the Olympic Village, and being transported to and from the swim area. During the athletes' daily treatments for soft-tissue therapy, Rollinson is able to handle the administration side of coaching.
"They can also run around the village, but we've been told that masks are mandatory at all times. And it's very hot in Tokyo. It's 40 degrees with 98 per cent humidity, so running outside with a mask on probably isn't going to be what most of them want to do," Rollinson said.
On Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced that Japan was to be placed in a state of emergency as a result of a COVID-19 case surge, which could reach into the thousands by August and is expected to last throughout the duration of the Olympics.
"From a triathlon standpoint, we've actually held an event in Japan since the qualification reopened in May,” Rollinson said of the WTS Yokohama race in which Brown placed 13th and Kretz placed 33rd for women. “The event was extremely successful; it was extremely structured, obviously. The Japanese did an incredible job of protecting their population and the travelling athletes, and the event went off without a hitch.
"I think the Canadian Olympic Committee has really committed to keeping people safe and putting on the best possible event on their end," she added.
"Essentially, I hope that what will happen is everybody goes in and we have a safe event, and it does provide a bit of a lift for the Japanese population despite the fact that they may be locked down."
Growing up in Tay Township in northern Simcoe County, Rollinson was continually surprised by the number of world-class athletes produced in the area.
Rollinson said she spoke with former Simcoe North MP Paul DeVillers last week and they were talking about how the Midland-Penetanguishene area "has this really grounded history in sport.
"And for a really small place, whether it's hockey or running — and swimming came up because the Keegos have a pretty awesome legacy in the past, too — I said that was huge in terms of what I do now.
“Everything was an option,” added Rollinson, including past local Olympians along with many other sports. “And we came from this tiny town where nobody really told anybody there that they couldn't do it.”
Being part of the Olympic team holds additional rewards, even if personally standing on the podium with a medal in hand isn’t one of them.
"These athletes are highly motivated people,” Rollinson said. “I don't know that they really 'need' us (coaches), in the sense that this is what they do and this is all they want: they eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But one of the coolest things about being nominated to the Olympic team is seeing how it affects everybody around us.”
Rollinson works with next-generation athletes aiming for the 2024 Olympic games in Paris.
“You should see how inspired they are; it makes it real for them. All of a sudden, somebody they know who's not a national team coach has been pulled in to coach at the Games, and it touches them. It affects them directly, and they realize that this is actually possible, that this could happen," she said.
"The whole notion of the ‘unity in sport’ piece, which is one of the foundations of the Olympic movement, is actually real. As soon as you say 'I'm going to the Games,' people light up.
"I look forward to putting my hands in the air when Tyler crosses the line,” Rollinson said with pride.
The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games are scheduled to take place July 23 through Aug. 8. The individual men’s event in triathlon will happen on July 26 (Day 3), with the individual women’s event on July 27 (Day 4), and all four racers competing in the debut of the team mixed relay on July 31 (Day 8).
