Brandon gymnast Isabela Onyshko realizes Olympic dream

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/06/2016 (3629 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — For more than a decade, Isabela Onyshko has dreamed about making it to the Olympic Games.

That dream came true Wednesday when the Brandon gymnast became one of the first three athletes named to Canada’s women’s Summer Olympics gymnastics team headed to Rio de Janeiro later this summer.

“It’s something I’ve been working towards for a long time,” Onyshko said.

She began gymnastics at the age of six at the Brandon Eagles Gymnastics Centre, and began dreaming about the Olympics not long after. She is the first Manitoba gymnast to be named as a competing member of the Olympic team since 1984.

In the end, all Onyshko had to do on the second day of the Gymnastics Canada Rio Selection Camp was an exhibition floor routine.

Her results nationally and internationally from the last year — including her recent all-around win at the national championships and a 16th-place finish all-around at the 2015 world championships — and her performance on the first day of the camp on Monday, were enough to propel her onto the team without having to compete Wednesday.

When the first three team members were announced from the 11 athletes vying for one of five spots, Onyshko grinned and gave a big wave. When her teammates began hugging her and offering their congratulations, the tears started to flow. Then she made a tearful phone call home to Brandon to tell her mom she was going to the Olympics.

Her coach, Lorie Henderson, was similarly emotional as she experienced the dream of coaching an athlete onto an Olympic team for the first time.

“You always think when you’re younger, ‘Oh yeah, I’m going to coach the next Olympian’ and then you realize it’s a lot more difficult than you think,” she said.

“You kind of have to have the right kid and the right mix of coaches.”

Onyshko didn’t move into the high-performance stream until she was 13 years old, which is considered late for a gymnast. But once she made that jump she quickly made her mark, and has been a top contributor on the Canadian team the last three years.

Onyshko, 18, will be joined by Nova Scotia’s Ellie Black and Alberta’s Brittany Rogers, who are both returning to the Olympics for a second time. Black, 21, has been the leader of the Canadian team since the London Olympics, and last year had a stellar performance, winning five medals at the Pan Am Games in Toronto and finishing seventh in the all-around at the world championships.

Black said the experience leading up to Rio has been different than the months heading into the London Olympics because she was a rookie then and is a veteran now.

“It’s a new experience for me, it’s so different,” she said. “Last time I had no clue if I could even make the team or not.”

‘It’s something I’ve been working towards for a long time’– Brandon gymnast Isabela Onyshko 

Rogers, 23, spent the four years between Olympics competing for the University of Georgia, but she says the entire time she knew she was going to try for another Olympics.

“About 10 seconds after I finished my second vault at the Olympic Games, I knew I wanted to go back and do another one,” she said.

“I knew how much more I had in me and the experience itself was just incredible. I’m hoping in Rio I can just sit back and enjoy it and know that I’ve done it before and know how to calm my nerves.”

The final two members of the team will be selected by Gymnastics Canada staff to fill in any gaps and ensure the team is as well-rounded as possible. They will be announced at an event in Gatineau, Que., today.

The team will assemble for a final training camp in Sarnia, Ont., near the end of July before flying to Rio. The Olympics begin Aug. 5 and the first women’s qualification event is Aug. 7.

 

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca