Meet the Canadian track athletes who will be competing at the 2016 Rio Olympics from August 11-16!
Jasmin Glaesser
Jasmin Glaesser is the only returning member of Canada’s 2012 Olympic bronze medal winning Team Pursuit squad. The 24 year old rider from Vancouver competes on both the road and the track, although in Rio she will just race on the track in the Women’s Team Pursuit.
Jasmin was born in Germany, but moved to Canada at the age of eight with her family. She was a runner in high school when she took up cycling in 2009. After gaining her Canadian citizenship, Jasmin was quickly selected to the national team, and was part of the Team Pursuit squad that won the gold medal at the 2011 Pan Am Games, followed a year later by the Olympic bronze medal. In 2015, the team won the gold medal at the Pan Am Games velodrome in Milton, Ontario.
The Team Pursuit squad has consistently been among the best in the world, winning medals at every world championships since 2012 – five consecutive years. They won the overall World Cup title for the 2015-16 season. However, Jasmin has also won multiple medals in individual events, including three more at the 2015 Pan Am Games – silver in the Omnium, gold in the Road Race and silver in the Time Trial. she also won silver at the 2012 and 2016 Track Worlds in the Points Race, and bronze in the 2014 Points Race, for a total of eight world championship medals.
“It’s pretty crazy that I’m the veteran, but I guess I have been around for a while. I’m pretty proud to see where we’ve come in the last four years with the new faces we’ve managed to integrate into the program. Five years we didn’t know what we were capable of. We had just started to leave our mark. This time around, we’ve shown amazing consistency throughout the last four years, and we have expectations to match that. We’re a lot more focussed, and there is certainly more pressure, but it’s the good kind.”
Kirsti Lay
Kirsti Lay has been in cycling for less then four years, but has already become one of the anchors of the Women’s Team Pursuit squad. Coming to cycling from speed skating, where Kirsti represented Canada at World Cups and three Junior World Championships, she joined the squad as a starter for the 2014 World Cup season, winning a silver medal in her first World Cup appearance. Since then, she has been on two world championship medal winning teams (2015, 2016), as well as being part of the squad that won the overall World Cup title for 2015-16, and the gold medal at the 2015 Pan Am Games.
Kirsti has joined team mate Jasmin Glaesser on the Rally Cycling pro road squad, and won the Queen of the Mountain competition at the 2015 Tour of California. Kirsti also acts as an Ambassador for Fast and Female, the Canadian organization that works to empower young girls through sport.
“I think cycling was a natural transition from speed skating for me. I was training on a bike in the summer, and Cycling Canada invited me to a camp to try the track based on my aerobic numbers. It really clicked with me and I loved it, almost more than skating itself right away.”
“Everyone on this team brings their own unique experiences, and I think that is why we are so strong as a unit. Our consistency is because of our focus, and we gained that in training; we’re together all the time. We usually have seven of us in the pool, so we are always pushing each other in training. It’s pushed us to be better individually and also to be a better team.”
“So far, for me personally, the greatest experience has been Pan Ams, to be racing at home, in front of family and friends. That feeling when we crossed the line and knew that we had won … that feeling is what we have worked so hard for every day. Going into Rio, that has really fueled us as a team.”
Georgia Simmerling
Georgia Simmerling is the newest member of the Canadian cycling team, having joined the sport just over two years ago, when she tried track cycling at a Talent ID Camp that Cycling Canada held. However, the Vancouver-born athlete is not new to elite sports; she represented Canada in Alpine Skiing (Downhill and Super-G) at the 2010 Winter Olympics and in Ski Cross at the 2014 Winter Olympics. She was on the podium for five World Cups in Ski Cross. Now, she will represent Canada at the 2016 Summer Olympics as part of the Women’s Team Pursuit squad.
Simmerling’s rise was rapid, and in January of this year she was part of the Team Pursuit squad that won the World Cup Final in Hong Kong, as well as the World Cup overall title. She followed that up with a silver medal as part of the team at the world championships. This helped cement her spot on the team for Rio.
“I was a winter athlete in two sports, but I wanted to do a summer sport, and I set a goal for myself of making this team. I really liked riding my bike as a skier, and I made a commitment to take a season off Ski Cross and go fully, 100%, into cycling, and it’s brought me here. I’m incredibly grateful for the team mates I have, because they’ve taught me everything. These girls are unbelievable; I’ve literally learned everything I know from my team mates. I think we are capable of amazing things in Rio, and we continue to get better every day. we are going to bring it in Rio, and it’s all going to come together.”
Allison Beveridge
Allison Beveridge began cycling at the age of 14 in her hometown of Calgary, and by the time she was a junior was already on the national team, representing Canada both on the Track and the Road at the world championships in both 2010 and 2011. She almost immediately made the transition to the senior team, and joined Canada’s powerhouse Team Pursuit squad in 2014, when she helped the team win a silver medal at the world championships, following that up with a bronze in 2015 and a silver again this year. The team took the gold medal at the Pan Am Games on home soil last summer. Allison was also part of the team when it won the overall World Cup title this past season.
However, Allison has strong individual results as well. She won a bronze medal in the Road Race at the Pan Am Games last year, and a gold medal at the second round of the World Cup this season in the Omnium, and finished fourth in the same event at the world championships. She also won a bronze medal in the Scratch Race at the Worlds in 2015. In the 2015 Tour of California, Allison finished fifth overall in the Points competition, eighth in the Mountain competition and ninth overall in the Young Rider classification. Although the youngest member of the squad, Allison will represent Canada in both the Team Pursuit and the Omnium at Rio.
“Growing up in Calgary, my sisters were involved in the Oval Cycling Centre. I was a swimmer, but I had an injury so I tried out cycling, and it went from there. One thing I aspire to do is get better each year, and I think some things have come together this year. I had the right legs on the right day, and I had some good results. The main focus [in Rio] is definitely the Team Pursuit; we know that we have been so consistent there and the other girls on the team have given so much that we want to do it justice. But, obviously I’ve given some thought to the Omnium. At this point, I’m going to take it as it comes.”
Laura Brown
Laura Brown is a veteran of Canada’s medal winning Women’s Team Pursuit squad. The Vancouver-based rider came to cycling from gymnastics, and joined the national team in 2009, when the Team Pursuit program was beginning its climb to the top. Laura rode with the team at the 2010 and 2011 world championships when they finished sixth both years, and was the alternate for the Olympic squad that won the bronze medal in London in 2012.
She was part of the Team Pursuit squad that took the world championships bronze medal in 2013 and silver medal in 2014, as well as multiple World Cup medals. In September of 2014, Laura was involved a crash on a road ride that resulted in a broken arm and collarbone, plus ligament damage to her shoulder. The injury resulted in her missing the 2014-15 track season, including the world championships. However, she returned to the program in time to be part of the team that won the gold at the Pan Am Games – her second consecutive gold after winning in 2011, in Guadalajara, Mexico (where she also won a bronze medal in the Time Trial).
“I grew up in Calgary and was a gymnast for a long time. After I got injured my mom was trying to find me a new sport, and she worked at the National Cycling Centre in the Olympic Oval, so she signed me up for the Fast and the Curious program when I was 14, in 2002. That was my first time riding a velodrome, I had never done it before. I’ve been on the team for a long time, I’ve been doing this a long time. They [team mates] call me Grandma Brown … I think in an endearing way!”
“We’ve won countless World Cups, but the results I’m most proud of are the 2014 world championships, where we came second, and gave the [Olympic champion and world record holding] Brits a run for their money. That was a huge breakthrough moment for us as a team. And, of course, the Pan Am Games gold in Milton. I had sat out the entire 2014-15 season from breaking my shoulder and arm, and that was my first race back, and we had such a beautiful ride. We won on home soil.”
“We still feel like underdogs going into Rio. We’ve never broken the world record, we’ve never won a world championship … but we’re consistently on the podium. So there’s a lot of things we still want to accomplish. So if we can put together the ride that we know we can do, then we are gold medal contenders.”
Monique Sullivan
Monique Sullivan, along with Jasmin Glaesser and Laura Brown, is one of three athletes on Canada’s track team returning to the Olympics from the London Games. The Calgary based sprinter got her start in cycling through the very successful Calgary introductory programs that allowed potential riders to try out the track; in Monique’s case, at the age of 12. Her talent was obvious, with a silver medal performance in the 500 metre time trial at the Nationals in the Junior category, even though she was too young to be awarded the medal.
Monique’s first international results were at the 2007 Junior world championships, when she took a bronze in the Keirin, followed by the 2009 Pan Am Championships, when she won bronze medals in the Team Sprint and Team Pursuit. She followed that up with silver in the 2010 and 2011 Pan Am Championships (also a bronze in 2011), and in 2012 took two gold medals. 2012 also saw Monique make the Final of the Women’s Keirin at the Olympics, where she finished sixth overall.
After taking 2013 off for school (when she finished her degree in Mechanical Engineering) and personal time, Monique returned to the national team in 2014, when she won a gold medal at the Pan Am Championships in the Keirin and silver in the Sprint, and then swept the Track Sprint events at the 2015 Pan Am Games in Canada, with gold medals in the Sprint, Keirin and Team Sprint events. She also finished fourth at the world championships in the Keirin, and earned her first career World Cup medal with her third place finish in the Keirin in New Zealand.
Monique, along with Team Sprint partner Kate O’Brien, will race all three sprint events in Rio; the Sprint, Keirin and Team Sprint.
“It definitely feels different going in this time. Sixth place in London was better than we were all expecting. It’s a little daunting, because these things aren’t linear; just because I got sixth in London doesn’t mean I will do better this time. But I think we are going in a lot stronger, with our training base in Milton, and a sprint coach and a team mate [Kate O’Brien], so we are going in, in the hunt for something more this time.”
“After London, I guess I felt I used up all my matches just to get there, and then had the race of my life on the day. I don’t think I retired because I was necessarily done with cycling, but I just needed a break. But I met with Erin [Hartwell, national sprint coach], and I thought I was giving feedback on the program, and then it turned out to be this really, really effective sales pitch on his part! And with Kate, and Milton, and the Pan Am Games all coming together, I just felt I had to give it a go. I’m really grateful I was given that second chance.”
“Three events is quite a lot, and it’s a tall order to focus on all three. The Team Sprint is explosiveness from the standing start and that’s what we’ve really focussed on. Then we do the Keirin the next day, and it’s special because it’s unpredictable and anything can happen; it’s been my best event, and you don’t always get it right, but there have been moments when I do everything right, and I’ve shown I can succeed at that level. Then immediately the next day we go into the Sprint tournament. So it’s going to be five days of racing if you make finals.”
“We’re doing everything we can, and we are seeing improvements every day. But everyone is going to be faster at the Olympics; it happens every time. There’s going to be people show up and surprise everyone and, to be honest, I hope that’s us.”
Kate O’Brien
Kate O’Brien is one of the newest members of Canada’s track cycling team, coming to the sport from Bobsleigh, where she spent six years on the national team. Kate was on track to represent Canada at the Sochi Olympics in 2014, until an injury took her out of contention. In the Spring of 2014, she attended a Talent ID camp for cycling in her home town of Calgary, and was invited to attend a training camp in Los Angeles, and shortly after joined the national team in the Sprint events, competing at the Pan Am Championships that same year.
The end of 2014 and beginning of 2015 was extremely busy, with Kate competing on both the cycling and bobsleigh World Cup circuits, as well as attending world championships for both sports. In the Spring of 2015, she switched her focus entirely to cycling, and it paid off with two medals at the Pan Am Games in Milton – a gold medal in the Team Sprint with Monique Sullivan, and a silver in the Sprint.
Kate continues to improve rapidly, and finished sixth in the Sprint at the 2016 world championships, as well as fifth (with Monique Sullivan) in the Team Sprint at the New Zealand World Cup and fourth in Hong Kong (they finished sixth overall). Kate will compete in all three Sprint events in Rio – Team Sprint, Sprint and Keirin.
“I think even having the experience I have since coming in two years ago I still totally feel like a newcomer. That’s not a bad thing, but I still feel like I have so much more to learn. Post-Sochi, I didn’t exactly know what to do and, serendipitously, Cycling Canada was having a Pedal to the Metal recruitment camp that came through Calgary and my friend went, and told me I should try it. I’d always been interested in cycling, so on a whim I tried it. I guess my numbers were okay, so I was invited to a camp with the national team and it just went from there.”
“A bad as it sounds, it took me some time to fall in love with the sport, because I came through in such a peculiar way and didn’t try it as a kid. But now I really do love it; it’s so fun. It is very different from bobsleigh, but the training is very similar, and that is one of the things I really liked about bobsleigh. And obviously, I have a bit of a need for speed…”
“But one of the things I like is getting the adrenalin rush from doing something that scares you and track cycling, to this day, I find extraordinarily frighting! And everyone makes fun of that because I was in bobsleigh before. But it gives me the opportunity to push myself physically and mentally every day.”
“When I look back, the improvements were actually quite incremental. It was really just chipping away at it, and it’s a testament to Erin [Hartwell, national coach] and Monique [Sullivan, team mate] to see it through, even though I am sure it was frustrating for them. So it’s a huge amount to do with the team that I am working with. Monique still teaches me so much on a daily basis, but now it is more of a partnership.”
“[Getting to] the Olympics has been a huge effort since the Pan Am Champs, because we didn’t get the points we needed there, and it’s only just starting to sink in that we are going to be there. The sixth place at the Worlds … I honestly don’t know how that happened! I just tried to ride how I wanted to ride and it worked out well.”
“It’s going to be hard in Rio with up to five days of racing, but I’m confident that Erin has prepped us well for what we need to do. For me the Team Sprint is really special, and I would like for us to do well there. Everyone’s going to be on their A game, so fingers crossed that things go well and I can execute the way that I want to.”
Hugo Barrette
Hugo Barrette is the only male rider on Canada’s track cycling squad at Rio, and will race the Men’s Keirin. Born on the remote Îles de la Madeleine in the Gulf of St Lawrence, Hugo took up cycling in 2009 as a Junior after first playing hockey. He is the first male Olympic athlete from the Îles de la Madeleine (Marie-Huguette Cormier is the first athlete from the Island, in fencing at the 1984 and 1988 Games). In 2011 he participated in his first world championships and has risen through the ranks of track cycling steadily.
By 2013, Hugo was beginning to garner international results, beginning with a silver medal at the Pan Am Championships in the Team Sprint, where the team set a new national record. In that 2013-14 World Cup season he finished fourth in the Keirin at the World Cup in Guadalajara, Mexico, the first Canadian man in 20 years to record a top-10 result. He finished the season ranked 14th in the world. He was also part of the Team Sprint squad that finished fourth at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland, and took a silver medal at the Pan Am Championships.
2015 proved to be a year of extreme highs and lows. At the Pan Am Games in Milton, Ontario, he won gold medals in the Sprint and Team Sprint, and bronze in the Keirin. However, in training before the start of the first World Cup of the 2015-16 season, in Cali, Colombia, Hugo suffered a horrific crash, when he went through the guardrail at the top of the track at high speed. He was knocked unconscious and sustained two broken lumbar vertebrae, a broken nose, facial lacerations, a neck dislocation and severe contusions throughout his body.”
Remarkably, he was back training on the track in three weeks, as he fought to attain the world ranking he needed to attend the Olympics. He did that just 81 days after his crash, with a silver medal in the Keirin at the Hong Kong World Cup. Unfortunately, his lack of results in the previous two World Cups as he recovered from his crash made it impossible for Canada to qualify in the Team Sprint, and for Hugo to qualify in the Sprint.
“It’s pretty cool to be the first male Olympian from Îles de la Madeleine. I’m super proud of coming from this Island. I had to leave the Island to pursue my goals and dreams, but everyone has always been at my back to support me since the beginning. That’s the people of the Island; it’s not about being the first or the second, it’s just the pride of being from there.”
“Definitely it has been quite a rollercoaster year. Starting from a high of getting two gold medals at the Pan Am Games in front of my family and the country was a really great moment. And then I was going to Cali for the first World Cup, hoping to win and thinking I was going to win with the legs I had … and then I crashed pretty hard. It made the season pretty complicated and stressful. Before that I was pretty sure to qualify in both the Keirin and the Sprint. So I missed one World Cup and the second one was my first race back and I was only 13th in the Keirin and had no result in the Sprint. So I had to show up in Hong Kong in such good shape, and I knew I had to do well. Not only to qualify for the Olympics, but to make into the Worlds. So that’s what I did.”
“I always perform well under pressure and that was my chance. Everyone was looking and wanted to see what I had, and I went over there with the same mentality that I had at the Pan Am Games. Hong Kong was the race of the year for me. I finished second by a tire width … it’s something I’m really proud about. There’s not too many moments in my career that I can say I’m really proud, but this is one of them. It took so much out of me, that three months of not even thinking about anything, not allowing myself to think about what had happened, just focussing on winning and that Olympic spot.”
“I learned that I need to focus on one specific race every three or four months, and that race is going to be amazing. But it requires so much out of me that at Worlds, mentally I didn’t have that do-or-die attitude. In any sprint event you need that. Match sprinting is like boxing – you need to know you are going to win, and it’s the same in the Keirin. When you come to the line you have to be confident that you are the absolute best and you are going to win. Otherwise, even if you have the legs, you are not going to make it. At that’s what happened at Worlds, I was just drained. I was still training, but that desire of winning at absolutely any cost wasn’t there.”
“So I took some rest after Worlds and now I’m back on, I’ve got that fire and I want to win, and I need to win. So I’m going to give it the best shot I’ve got for the Olympics. The Olympics are the biggest event, but I can relate to that pressure because we had Pan Am Games at home in Canada. So although the Olympics are way bigger and get more attention, I think it is going to be similar to what we faced at Pan Am Games. For the people who help me, and support me and follow me … I want to do good and show them what I’ve got. It’s for the people who took the time to help me and support me, and there’s a lot of people. So that pressure I had at Pan Am Games, I think it is going to be similar.”
“Some people get stressed at big events, I’m only stressed leading to the event. So that last four months I have been stressed and under pressure, I put a tremendous amount of pressure on myself, on a daily basis. But when the Olympics come, I know I did everything in my power to be at my best, so from then on it’s just exciting. So I am looking forward to racing, because I know I have the best in me. I can’t control what my opponents are going to bring to the table, but I know I did the best I could, so no matter the result, I’ll be proud of what I’ve accomplished. I think that’s the reason why, when I show up to these big events, I feel the stressful excitement, but not a big weight on my shoulders like some others. It’s my time to shine, and I’ve done everything I could, so I’ll do it.”
Behind every successful athlete is a team of hard-working, passionate and devoted coaches, mechanics and soigneurs. Meet Cycling Canada’s track staff and see how they play a major role at achieving our Olympic goals.
Erin Hartwell
Erin Hartwell is Canada’s national coach for the Sprint events – the Team Sprint, Sprint and Keirin. However, he is also an Olympic medalist in his own right, with a bronze medal in the 1000 metre Time Trial from the 1992 Olympics and a silver medal in the same event at the 1996 Olympics (where he missed the gold by two-tenths of a second). He held both world and Olympic records.
In July of 2014, Erin was hired to oversee the development of an expanded Track Sprint program, with the opening of the permanent training facility at the Milton velodrome, and the approaching Pan Am Games. Canada has had past success in the Sprint events, with Lori-Ann Muenzer winning Olympic gold in the 2004 Olympics, Curt Harnett winning three Olympic medals, Tanya Dubnicoff’s world title in the Sprint and Gord Singleton’s world title in the Keirin. However, this is the first time that Canada has had an actual program and permanent training facility.
The results have been quick to follow, with a total of six gold medals on the track at the Pan Am Games; five of them from the sprint squad. The Sprint team also won a silver and a bronze. Other results include a silver medal at the World Cup final in the Men’s Keirin this season, plus fourth in the Women’s Keirin and sixth in the Women’s Sprint at the world championships. Canada qualified riders in all three Sprint events for the women and in the Keirin for the men.
“I was a six time world championship and Olympic medalist as a rider, switching from Sprint to endurance events after the 1996 Games, and then rode for two years on the road before retiring after injuries in 2002. Overall, I was pretty happy with what I was able to accomplish on the bike.”
“After retiring I went to university in North Dakota for commercial aviation and statistics, but the downturn in the aviation industry after 9/11 [the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001], got me thinking it could be a long time before I had a career. So an opportunity came up to coach in Wales, and here we are.”
“That was back in 2003, 2004, and I’ve been in coaching ever since. I had a great opportunity in Trexlertown [Pennsylvania] in 2005 to 2009, where I ran the track for four years. But the coaching bug in me is pretty strong, and an opportunity came up to go down to Trinidad and Tobago, where I got to work with [sprinter] Njisane Phillip, who was fourth in London in 2012. Then this opportunity came open here in Canada, and I’ve been happy ever since.”
“When I came in, we hit the ground running. The directive to me initially was ‘let’s focus on Tokyo 2020’, but we had some existing athletes who were ready to try for Rio. But, to a certain extent, we had to start over; Monique Sullivan came out of retirement, and we had a talent sweep all across Canada and discovered a number of athletes, including Evan Carey and Kate O’Brien.”
“I definitely think we have a program that is being put in place, but the game changer, as Curt Harnett has always said, is the facility in Milton. We have strong infrastructure, we have great staff, and we have athletes that are getting on board, but we also now have a program for athletes to come in to; it isn’t just a transient program, based in Los Angeles, we’re bonafide right here in Milton. I think that is probably our strongest asset. This is the best organization I have ever worked for in my 30 years of cycling. We are medal capable, but are we going to win medals? That’s why we race … to find out.”
Dan Peters
One of the most important jobs on Canada’s Olympic cycling team is that of mechanic. The mechanics work long hours before, during and after each race to make sure bikes are set up properly for each event and are checked over and repaired (as necessary) after every race. Dan Peters of Winnipeg is the head mechanic for Canada’s track squad. Between events he is based at the velodrome in Milton that is the headquarters for the Canadian team, but during the World Cup and world championships season (and now during the Olympics), he is on the road with the team. We spoke with Dan about his role with the team.
“I’ve been a bike mechanic since 2006 and working with Cycling Canada since 2012. Back in late 2011, early 2012, Richard Wooles – when he was the head coach of track – was looking for a North American-based mechanic. He put the word out to some provincial coaches and Jason Gillespie, who I had worked with in Manitoba, got me in touch with Richard and I did a training camp with the team in Los Angeles, and then a World Cup in London [the 2012 test event], and the rest was history.”
“I raced on the road as a Junior and after high school I started working in a bike shop as a mechanic, then I started working with the provincial team as their mechanic. After university I decided I wanted to be a bike mechanic, I really enjoyed it.”
“Typically, in the days leading up to a competition, during training, we have a set training period on the track. I’ll typically get to the track two to three hours before hand, set up all the bikes with what gearing the coaches want for the warmup, get the bikes prepped and our pit set up with everything that the riders need and that I need. After the training session is finished, about an hour later I pack everything up again, plus fix any issues and get ready for the next day.”
“Once competition actually starts, I go through the schedule to figure out when I need to be there; typically a couple of hours before our competitions start. Then I just get everything ready and we start going through the schedule – what events we’re doing, who’s riding, what bikes they are using.”
“Once we are at the track for the competition, all the work has been done on the bikes. It’s really more about making sure everything works like clockwork, knocking out all the events, getting the tires pumped, getting the right gears on, make sure every bolt is checked, have the bikes checked in the UCI jig and go to the start line for every event. We might race as many as 10, 20, 30 heats in a day, and it’s all about keeping on top of things.”
“When something happens [crash, flat tire, broken chain], it really depends on what happened. So for any bunch event I’ll stand track side, typically with the rider’s spare bike – which is an identical bike to what they are riding – and a set of spare wheels with the same gearing they are running. So if there is an issue I have immediately available another bike or another set of wheels, whatever they need.”
“If it’s an event like a timed team event then I will stand track side with a spare set of wheels in case there is a puncture, which can happen at any time. If there’s a more serious mechanical, then it’s a case-by-case situation, including what the commissaires decide to do. For a Sprint event it is very similar, unless there is a crash, because then it depends on the commissaire and whether the rider can ride again. Only if they are riding again do I have to repair the bike or replace the bike for the next heat they get put in. So there’s a wide range of things that can happen, and typically I stay track side when the riders are on the track.”
“I’ve done it enough that it’s usually not stressful. The only time there is stress is going through airports and putting all my equipment into the hands of somebody else!”
“This is my first Olympics; ultimately, it’s just another bike race. The format is the same, if not easier than most of the races we do, because the competition is spread out over more days and there’s less events in those days. So, the tension is there because it is such an important event, but at the end of the day, it’s the same as usual.”
