Caledon's Sylvester rowing to Beijing Olympics

Caledon's Cameron Sylvester (right) and Douglas Vandor of Quebec will represent Canada at the 2008 Olympic Summer Games, which start Aug. 8. Submitted Photo

Caledon's Cameron Sylvester's will be heading to Beijing for the August Olympic Games as a most unlikely candidate.

Growing up in Caledon and attending Caledon Public School, Cameron was a regular kid trying his hand at most sports.

His mother Anne and father David are both active sportspeople and so Cameron was exposed to many activities. At Mayfield Secondary School, Cameron tried his hand at running, swimming and local triathlons, but shin splints cause him grief and he looked for a lower-impact sport.

Fortunately for Sylvester, Orangeville's Island rowing club was just around the corner. What the club lacked in resources, it made up for in making rowing a fun sport to learn.

Soon under the initial guidance of Caledon's Cathy Wilson and Swen Whartley, Cameron found his calling. Like many hundreds of local kids, Cameron's first learned of the beauty of rowing at the local Island Rowing Club.

While Island Rowing wet his appetite for rowing, it was the varsity program at the University of Western Ontario in London that cemented his focus. National Team Coach Volker Nolte took Sylvester's raw talent and has been able to hone it into that of an Olympian. During the school year, the 22-year-old has been in London balancing the demands of academics and off-season rowing fitness.

As soon as exams finish each spring Sylvester has lived and trained in Victoria, BC, where much of Canada's rowing history has been created.

Life is about timing and Sylvester has benefited by rowing's inclusion of the light-weight category in the Olympic Games.

"For the first 100 years, rowing was basically a bigman's sport, as the boats were made up of the biggest, heaviest, strongest men and women," said Sylvester.

Rowing has now added a lightweight category as a fullmedal sport, allowing incredible athletes who weigh less, to have a chance at an Olympic medal as well.

Sylvester's break-through in rowing occurred two years ago, when the then 20-yearold won the lightweight men's national single championships in Welland.

Beating the top-dogs in Canada who have rowed for many more years was a big turning point in my rowing career," said Sylvester.

Once Sylvester got over the psychological barrier of realizing he could row with the best of the country, he turned his sites on making the Beijing Olympic Team.

Sylvester's next step in his international career was racing at the 2006 23 and Under World Championships. There the Caledon native was not just racing great Canadians he was racing the best Europeans, Australians and American rowers.

To increase his chances of making the Beijing team, Sylvester took the winter semester off from his university studies and stayed in Victoria for the past winter to train with his Quebec partner Douglas Vandor. Thirty plus hour training weeks pushed Sylvester to the brink of fatigue on many days.

"Although rowing is only six minutes of racing, you put in thousands of hours of training to be able to maximize your fitness for those few brief minutes in a competition," said Sylvester.

The pressure was on Sylvester and Vandor in June, as they headed to Poland for the Olympic Trials. The IOC (International Olympic Committee) only allows a small number of boats into the Games, and the Canadian men's lightweight team had to finish in the top three (of 17 competing) in Poland to gain a Beijing berth.

I have had a chance to work with many of Canada's top Olympic rowers in the 1980s and 90s and I can tell you they are some of the fittest people in the world," said Caledon's Olympic Triathlon Coach Barrie Shepley.

Shepley said he has seen rowers with raw hands from countless hard hours in the boat, and it is not uncommon to hear of a rower with a fractured rib, from breathing so hard in training that their intercostals muscles pull the ribs apart.

These guys are absolute animals and since Silken Lauman and Marnie McBean in the 80s and 90s, rowing has been one of Canada's most successful teams at the Olympic Games," said Shepley.

Sylvester and his Canadian teammates will stay in Victoria until July 30, before heading over to Beijing to acclimatize themselves to the heat and humidity and to get over the jet lag.

I remember walking into the opening ceremonies in Sydney eight years ago, and I am sure that Cameron and all of Caledon will be proud when he marches in next month," said Shepley.

Rowing events occur in the first 10 days of the Olympic Games and Sylvester believes that his boat have a legitimate chance of making it to the six boat Olympic final.

If your in the "A" final, anything is possible," said the local Olympian. "While I will be supremely focused until my event is over, once we are done, my parents and I expect to see as many events as we can fit into our schedule."

The rowing team will stay outside of the athlete's village in a local hotel near their rowing venue for the first 10 days, then the athletes will move into the village after their events are over.

The Olympic Village is like no other," said Shepley, who roomed with Olympic Gold medal triathlete Simon Whitfield in the 2000 Games. "There will be 10, 000 athletes, from 200 countries, in a gated town that was designed for the world's greatest athletes."

At only 22, the Caledon native knows that he will only get better between now and the London Olympics in 2012.

Top rowers are closer to thirty years of age, so I have at least one if not two more Olympic Games where I could be even stronger then I am for Beijing" he said.

Shepley reminds Sylvester that after their rowing careers ended, Derek Porter and Marnie McBean both got into triathlon (Porter doing the very challenging Ironman Australia soon after his rowing career ended).

"I don't think Simon Whitfield is going to have worry about me in triathlon anytime soon; but the Germans and Australian rowers, well that's another story,"" he stated.

All of Canada can see Sylvester when the games begin on CBC on Aug. 8.