Grant soars to top of podium

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/09/2022 (1075 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Taryn Grant set out to reach two career milestones: win a professional water-skiing event and podium at the world championships. She’s halfway there.

Grant, 27, captured the 2022 MasterCraft Pro water-ski tournament title in Polk City, Fla., on Sunday. The jump-skiing event was the Winnipeg native’s first pro win, which she secured in with a 177.85 foot (53.6 metres) leap in the final round.

“Having that first win was pretty special,” said Grant, who also specializes in slalom skiing.

A moment at the top of the podium has been a long-time coming for Grant, who now ranks sixth in the world. The Manitoba product started gliding across the waters of Betula Lake about as soon as she could walk, she said.

Her parents, both teachers, spent much of their summers at their cabin in Whiteshell Provincial Park, which afforded Grant plenty of time to be towed around on her skis.

“I mean, being on the water, there’s nothing quite like it, especially jump (water-skiing), I find,” Grant told the Free Press on Tuesday. “Being able to fly and it’s just the adrenaline, the excitement, the nerves, everything that has to do with competing and kind of feeling free, is what keeps on drawing you back I think.”

It was Grant’s older brother, Cole, who piqued her interest in the sport. Cole, who is two years older than his sister, quickly took the competitive route of water-skiing, joining the junior provincial squad before eventually reaching the collegiate level.

“I kind of saw him doing these tournaments, getting more involved in skiing and I really just wanted to follow in his footsteps,” Grant said.

That she did, and more. Grant joined Manitoba’s junior development team before leaping to the national junior team, for which she would represent at the junior world championships as a 13-year-old. She quickly moved up the ranks, competing in the U21 world championships, where she won gold in slalom and the open world championships.

Grant reached a critical juncture at which she had to decide how serious she wanted to take the sport following a national competition, when Steve Bush, a nationally renowned water-ski coach, approached the budding talent.

“He said, ‘You’ve got the talent, but you need to continue to train outside of Winnipeg, outside of Manitoba,’ because, obviously we have quite the small season to be able to ski. So he suggested coming down to Florida.”

In 2007, Grant packed her bags for the Sunshine State, where Matt Rini, the Canadian national team’s technical coach at the time, awaited the youngster. Every May, the duo trained together for three weeks to get a jump start on the season, in hopes the ice would have melted from the Manitoba waters by the time she returned home.

In 2021, after graduating from the University of Lafayette, Taryn permanently moved to Orlando, Fla., where she currently lives with her brother Cole and a couple of roommates.

“It’s been very special watching the little girl who started and her continue on this path for so many years to finally get that first get that first pro win,” said Cole Grant, who now coaches the next generation of Canadian skiers at Matt Rini Waterski School. “She’s had some other major successes at different age group levels and it’s kind of been waiting for that first professional win.”

“To watch her daily hard work and perseverance, through some tough obstacles she’s had in the last 10 years, as it relates to the sport, it’s been pretty remarkable.”

Cole Grant, 29, said he was coaching 14 minutes away from his sister’s competition on Sunday, but watched from his phone. Seeing her name flash across his screen as the winner, he said, was “a little bit of that ‘finally moment’ that she’s deserved for so long.”

“A lot of pride and joy for her, for that same hard work and courage she’s shown through a lot of moments in this sport, and staying the path,” he said.

“I don’t think our parents ever imagined us competing really at any level, never mind Taryn winning a pro event. But it’s always been something we’ve done together: road trips down south, travelling together around the world, on a water-ski team at university together. It’s kept us very close not only relationship-wise and personally, but as well geographically.”

Grant will continue to lean on her brother, in hopes of competing and placing at the IWWF World Waterski Championships, checking the final box on her career to-do list.

“That’s our major event,” Grant said. “We’re not an Olympic sport, so those world championship events are big for us.”

jfreysam@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @jfreysam