Canadian Caileigh Filmer of Workforce Blue Ridge Twenty24 has punched her ticket to go to the Paris Olympics however it will not be on the bike. Filmer, 27, has rowed for her nation in two Olympics already and shall be making her third look in August.
In 2016, Filmer was a part of an eight-woman shell that completed fifth within the Rio Olympics. After a break from the game to give attention to her psychological well being, Filmer made the choice to return to rowing and received a bronze medal on the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in a two-woman shell with Hillary Janssens. This was Canada’s first Olympic medal in rowing since 1992.
In Paris, Filmer will as soon as once more be a part of an eight-woman shell.
(Picture credit score: Getty Pictures)
Out of the water, Filmer has been biking on the UCI stage since 2021, and has completed within the High 5 of the Canadian nation time trial championships twice.
Forward of the 2023 season, Filmer joined Nicola Cranmer’s Workforce Blue Ridge Twenty24, the longest working girls’s skilled biking crew on the earth, with the hopes of a qualifying for the Paris Olympics in monitor biking.
In 2022, Filmer represented Workforce Canada on the Milton Nations Cup the place she took half within the girls’s crew pursuit, serving to Canada to advance all the best way to the finals, the place they finally misplaced to Workforce U.S.A. by a fraction of a second.
(Picture credit score: @canadiancyclist)
In 2023, Filmer once more represented Canada, this time on the Pan Am Championships within the particular person time trial, the place she positioned 14th out of 28.
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The rower-turned-cyclist suffered a tough begin to 2024 which can have impacted her possibilities of being chosen to the Canadian Olympic crew for monitor biking. Filmer suffered from an sickness at the beginning of the yr, and was then concerned in a automobile accident that left her with a extreme whiplash and concussion-like signs that delayed her return to full energy on the bike.
In Might, Filmer had opted to return to the rowing shell and earned a gold medal on the Rowing World Cup in Lucerne with Workforce Canada. This efficiency helped her punch her ticket to Paris, albeit on the water as an alternative of the boards of the velodrome.
Collectively along with her seven teammates, Filmer goals to make Canada back-to-back girls’s rowing Olympic champions within the eight-woman occasion.
“It’s a surreal feeling that that is actually occurring. The journey to this point to those Olympics has been unbelievable and I wouldn’t change it,” Filmer says. “By all the ups and downs the previous three years, residing overseas in numerous nations, competing in two completely different sports activities, I can’t imagine it’s actually occurring.”
Workforce Blue Ridge Twenty24 helps Filmer’s foray into two sports activities:
“Caileigh Filmer has been a useful mentor and advisor to our junior crew, generously sharing her wealth of expertise as a excessive performer in each rowing and biking,” the crew says. “Her insights on the rules of excellence and efficiency seamlessly cross over all sports activities…[we] want her all the perfect for Paris 2024.”
Filmer and Workforce Canada’s eight-woman shell will start their journey to gold in Paris on July 29.
The 2-sport athlete has not but shared if she plans on persevering with to pursue her skilled biking profession after the 2024 Olympics, or if she’s going to focus solely on rowing.
