Developing distance swimmers is certainly a priority for Swimming Canada, as evidenced by a major announcement geared toward that objective.
Swimming Canada announced that it is launching a National Distance Training Group, which will be headquartered at the High Performance Centre-Ontario, based on the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus.
The big emphasis is to develop distance swimmers at the junior and senior international levels in the 400, 800, 1500 meter freestyle events, and also the 400 individual medley.
“This is a fantastic opportunity,” National Distance/Open Water Coach Mark Perry said in a press release. “Right now, there aren’t enough male or female swimmers progressing in the distance pool events. That impacts both pool performance in distance events, 400-m and down events, and the development of open water athletes. Our strategic plan aims to strengthen distance swimming, and this program will help us bridge that gap. The world stage has a noticeable gap between top finishers and the rest of the field—there’s a real opportunity here for Canadian swimmers.”
The program will begin in September, but applications are being accepted immediately. It will target female swimmers born in 2011 or earlier and male swimmers born in 2010 or earlier.
Eligible athletes must have On Track times or be close to achieving such standards.
The program will be overseen by Perry, and High Performance-Centre coaches Ryan Mallette and Rob Novak.
The release also said athletes will have an integrated support team in conjunction with the Canadian Sport Institute of Ontario, which will provide expertise in areas such as sport science, nutrition, psychology, physiotherapy, strength and conditioning, and mental performance.
Athletes and their coaches are encouraged to contact Swimming Canada Manager of High Performance Centre Operations Michelle Poirier at [email protected] to learn more.
Team Canada won eight medals at the Paris Olympics, its second-highest total ever. Of course, half that total was produced alone by Summer McIntosh, who won gold medals in the 400 freestyle, 200 butterfly and 200 IM, and a silver medal in the 400 freestyle relay.
Ryan Cochrane was the last Canadian to medal in a distance freestyle event at an Olympics when he won silver at the 2012 London Games.
If SC wants to have more distance swimmers they have to work closely with clubs. The current trend is going in the exactly opposite direction. There is no honest, respectful collaboration between SC and clubs. Clubs are drifting away from the old-days swimming yardage philosophy. Let’s take Summer Mcintosh’s home club, ESWIM. It produced numerous national record holders and just very good long distance swimmers and IMers in a very recent past (Mcintosh, Jansen, Bellio, MacLean, Kwinter). And nowadays? No more hardcore, old-school endurance practices, no ESWIM in those finals at big meets. Quite a few long distance swimmers, national record holders from the opposite end of the country disappeared as well (Peter Huang, Adam Wu, etc.). Someone is barking up… Read more »
It’s interesting to see our Candian distance struggles, because if you look at the culture of every major program, they are pretty keen to offer distance based and IM based training. It seems like our memberships don’t enjoy racing distance and it’s a bit force fed. I like the violin approach. Don’t let them play it and they’ll want to play it.
3k for time once a month for the next 8 years
Where can one find the ‘on track’ times?
https://www.swimming.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/On-Track-Times-for-SNC-Website-APRIL-2025.pdf
Maybe Bruce Gemmel can just write up sets and email them to club coaches across Canada who are lucky enough to still have 50M water access (fewer by the day…). Might save a bunch of $$$
This is a result of Own the Podium decreasing funding to Swim Canada. Own the Podium cites plenty of factors into decision making and Swimming Canada was told that their funding was going to decrease due to lack of performances from distance swimming.
Do they break down swimming in that way? If Canada “owned” the podium and had 5-6 swimmers (men and women) driving success by medalling at WC and Olympics in 200’s on down, would OTP give an ultimatum for not winning at distance swimming??
Seems weird if that is the case. Wouldn’t it just be about how many medals in aggregate?
Unfortunately, OTP does not split the program this way. Swimming Canada is evaluated on everything including our poor open water swimming. In doing this program Swimming Canada is “showing” OTP they are at least trying. Take a look at OTP funding for yourself and you’ll see the decrease and this lack of distance and open water success, regardless of 400 and down success does not matter to them. OTP is a flawed system
We went to the Barbados Open Water Festival last November and those guys killed it. Team Canada came prepared and they had several swimmers smoke the 10k.
Whatever they are doing is working and Canadian distance swimming is going to be dangerous for years to come.
Can’t think of a better idea than trying to convince families of a bunch of 14 and 15 year old kids that are already progressing and swimming well to move across the country and let us pound the crap out of them physically and mentally and see what ends up sticking to the wall at the end. The whole age group “national training” centre has already failed how do they keep getting money to restart another version of it.