Some athletes train their whole lives in hopes of someday competing at the Olympics just once. Many fall short in this pursuit. Kelowna’s Will Dean is about to make his second appearance at the world’s premier sporting event, and is ready to best his results from London four years ago.

While Rio 2016 will not be Dean’s first Olympic experience, it will still be a time of firsts for the rower in other respects: after finishing ninth in the men’s four at London 2012, the Active Care Athlete of the Month for June is on to an entirely different discipline with three new teammates.

In this Olympiad he’ll be rowing with Pascal Lussier, Rob Gibson, and Julien Bahain in the men’s quadruple sculls, albeit in his usual seat-three position. He’s the last remaining member of his London boat, as all three of his former teammates have moved on from the sport for different reasons.

“I’m the only one left,” said the Kelowna Secondary School graduate, who went on to row at the University of California Berkley and graduated with an English degree in 2010. “London was the first Olympics for all four of us, and none of us knew what to expect. We were young and inexperienced. We had a good first race, a not so good second race, and before you knew it, the whole thing was over.”

“I feel a lot better prepared going into these Olympics. I’m not guaranteeing any specific results, but the guys that I’m with now are a little bit older, and a lot more experienced — it’ll be the third Olympics for two of our guys. I’m looking forward to it.”

Collecting a group of four fast rowers is one thing, but having them all sit in the same boat and work together as a cohesive unit when they need to most is another. Dean, who won gold in the men’s quad with Bahain and Gibson at the 2015 Pan Am Games in Toronto, will need to rekindle that magic from last year – a second place finish at the FISA final Olympic qualification Regatta in Switzerland last month barely nabbed them the seventh and final qualifying spot for Rio.

“You can put four really fast people together in a boat and sometimes they just don’t work well together,” Dean said. “You can try to fix that by correcting technique, by having everybody change to fit a certain style, or even by switching people out and racing in a different combination, but sometimes it just doesn’t work. You spend a lot of time working together, and you can get about 99 per cent in sync within a week or so. Then you spend hours and hours and hours and hours squeaking out the last little tiny fraction of a per cent.”

“Our races are decided by really small amounts. If you make a small mistake it can cost you one or two seconds and you can fall from first to 14th. This year I’ve had the best scores of my life on the rowing machine, and I’m stronger than I’ve ever been. We’ve got four guys who are all good individually, and it works for the four of us. It’s good. We’re in a great position.”

Whether he guarantees how his team will finish or not, victory is undoubtedly the goal for Active Care Athlete of the Month Dean and the Canadian boat when they tangle with Germany, Australia, Estonia, Great Britain, Switzerland, Lithuania, Poland and the Ukraine on Rodrigo de Freitas Lake this August. To correctly predict how they will finish is a tall order anyway, due to the parity in skill of each competing nation, and the variable water conditions that the outdoor sport imposes on all teams each race.

“Anybody would be lying to you if they told you they weren’t hoping to win,” Dean conceded. “Our event is wide open and a unique situation in rowing in that there are so many boats that have been on the podium in the last four years. There hasn’t been one really dominant boat that’s just always winning and leaving everyone miles behind. It’s been really close and tons of different boats have done really well over the last quadrennial. It wouldn’t be crazy if we won.

“Whoever has the best race on the day is going to come away with the medal. If we don’t have our absolute best race we could finish near the bottom. If we have a really good race, we could do really well.”

Some athletes are trained to visualize victory prior to competitions to instill self-confidence and foster success. Dean chooses to rely on focus, attention to detail, and proper process to yield the results he seeks for his group.

“We don’t spend a ton of time thinking about the actual results,” said Dean. “We try to really focus on the process of what we need to do to achieve those results. Even when I’m on the starting line, I’m not thinking that this is my chance to win a medal. I think about it from time to time, but I’m thinking mostly about each stroke. I never need to motivate myself, or to tell myself, ‘come on Will, you can do this!’ I know I’m always going to go really hard. If there’s anything I need to think about, it’s calming myself down and focusing on exactly what I need to do each individual stroke.”

The team knows not to let finish expectations cloud its mental priorities, but there will be other points of distraction in Rio that the Canadian boat will have to keep at bay as well.

The Zika virus, political instability, and polluted race waters are just a few of the issues that athletes will encounter while trying to perform at their peak. The advantage that the competitors have over the residents of Rio however, is that they are able to leave what the people of Brazil’s second largest city have to deal with every day. Dean has concerns, but is confident that Canada’s team doctors have them covered.

“To be honest, I am concerned about the water down there,” Dean said. “We’re taking every precaution that we can though. We’re taking the Dukoral oral vaccination, we’re really careful with washing our hands and our water bottles, we go to the doctor to get water.

“I’m definitely trying to stay informed as to what’s going on, but our focus is to not have that kind of stuff bother us or affect our performance. I’m going to put a lot of effort into minimizing all the distractions, and remembering that it’s just rowing a boat down a 2,000 meter stretch of water in a place I’ve never been before. I have a ton of confidence in Rowing Canada’s medical staff—we have some really great doctors, and if they’re legitimately concerned about anything being a credible risk than I’m going to ultimately go with what they say.”

Ignoring the problems doesn’t solve them though. Dean is glad to see dialogue occurring, and hopes all the talk ultimately evolves into actions that benefit the people of Rio for years to come.

“We shouldn’t shy away from it, pretend that it doesn’t exist, or try to whitewash it,” Dean argued. “I think that’s the instinct of a lot of people within the Olympic movement. It’s a really good thing that the media is asking a lot of questions and that people are talking about the issues and really looking into fixing them.

“The water in Rio should be sorted out for the people who live there. That’s infinitely more important than fixing it just for the Olympic Games. The Olympics at the end of the day is a show. Getting people’s lives sorted out is much more important.”

Before they depart for the Games, Dean and his team are training at Rowing Canada’s National Training Center in Victoria. A lot of time goes into their prep – sometimes 50 to 60 hours a week between races, training, therapy, and everything else required of them. Dean is very thankful to his supporters — backing from his parents, his fiancé, the RBC Olympians program, Harmony Honda, and the Canadian government have all helped fuel the pursuit of Dean’s Olympic aspirations.

“I’m lucky to have a super supportive fiancé,” said Dean. “It’s a demanding lifestyle. The last couple of years I’ve been on the road for six months of the year. It’s a huge time commitment. We train seven days a week and we train hard.”

“Keeping your body healthy and injury-free is like a second event unto itself. We’re constantly getting all kinds of repetitive stress injuries and other things that we’ve got to stay on top of. I feel supported enough that I can train without having to worry about basic things. I owe a lot of that to the Canadian government, RBC, and Harmony Honda in Kelowna. I definitely appreciate all the support that I get.”

While he trains in the provincial capital, Active Care Athlete of the Month Dean’s heart remains in Kelowna. The cheers he hears from his hometown seem to sound the loudest; the support he feels from there, amongst the strongest.

“I definitely miss spending time in Kelowna,” he admitted. “I just love it there—it’s the best community. It’s where I was born and raised. I’m a fifth generation Kelowna resident. I would love to spend more time there. I’m super appreciative of coming from Kelowna. It was a fantastic place to grow up, and I feel very supported by my hometown, for sure.

“One of the best things about this sport is feeling very supported by my community.”

Honourable Mention: Tiegan Taylor

The runaway winner of the Zone 2 (Thompson-Okanagan) girls’ junior golf championship in early June, Kelowna’s Tiegan Taylor added a U.S. junior championship tournament-qualifying berth to her impressive and expanding resume later in the month.

Taylor, who turned 17 on June 14, shot a 4-over-par 76 on the 6,300-yard SpurWing course in Boise, ID to earn one of two berths available for the U.S. junior national event being played at the Ridgewood Country Club in Parmus, N.J. July 18-23.

As the Zone 2 champion, Taylor will also play in the B.C. junior championship tournament in Pemberton July 12-15 and is scheduled to compete at the B.C. women’s amateur championship in Tsawwassen July 5-8. She’ll also golf at the Canadian junior girls championship event in Shurbenacadie, N.S. Aug. 2-5.

Already being wooed by several NCAA Div. 1 schools, Taylor hopes to have a golf scholarship in place before her Grade 12 year begins in September.

Honourable Mention: Rostam Turner

Rostam Turner scored a personal-best 7,565 total points and recorded five PBs – 6.85 metres in long jump, 1.91m in high jump (a six cm increase), 49.26 seconds in the 400m, 4:27.43 in the 1,500m and 4.55m in pole vault – en route to the Canadian decathlon championship at the Pan American Combined Events Cup in Ottawa earlier this month.

The Kelowna Secondary School graduate and Okanagan Athletics Club member, now ranked No. 3 in Canada, said he was “a little surprised” at himself and his performance.

“I wasn’t expecting to be national champion. It just all came together. I think the biggest thing for me is that I was healthy all year. I’m happy that I performed to a standard that I’ve been trying to get to for a while.”

Following competition at the annual Jack Brow Memorial Track and Field Meet in Kelowna July 1-3, the 21-year-old will compete at the Canadian senior Nationals in Edmonton July 7-10 and the U23 North American/Central American championships in El Salvador July 14-19.