Victoria's Ryan Cochrane tuned up for the Commonwealth Games with a strong showing at the Pan Pacific Championships in August, winning two gold and one silver. (Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press) It was what he saw amid the ice and snow that helped Canadian swimmer Ryan Cochrane get some of his mojo back.
The country's only medallist in swimming at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Cochrane was fighting his own battle with the monotony of training when he travelled a short distance to the Vancouver Games in February.
"Watching in Vancouver, I realized how many people in the country are behind sport," Cochrane said. "You don't see that when you're overseas or training every day. You see the people in your bubble or your community and your city but you don't really see how interested everyone is in Canada.
"That's such a motivator for the next couple of years and the rest of my career."
With the next Olympic Games in London less than two years away, the dog days of training aren't as plentiful.
Cochrane heads to Delhi for the Commonwealth Games on Oct. 3 as the unquestioned top dog on a Canadian swim team marking real progress after disappointing international competitions in the previous decade.
The Victoria native won gold medals in the 800 and 1,500 metre freestyle races at the recent Pan Pacific championships in late August and added a silver in the 400.
Speaking to CBCSports.ca on Aug. 27, just a few days removed after the Pan Pacific meet in Irvine, Calif., Cochrane displayed the modesty typical of a Canadian athlete, but also a bent for perfectionism less frequently expressed publicly by our national athletes.
He was quick to note the absence of top rivals at the Pan Pacs — a list that would include Ous Mellouli of Tunisia and Chinese swimmers Sun Yang and Zhang Lin — and he still considered his winning times "subpar."
But nearly going 3-for-3 is still an impressive performance, and Cochrane recognized that.
"There's always going to be 30 things to work on but it's nice to know that we're focusing on a couple of things but we're already doing about 98 per cent of things right," he said.
Cochrane said he was most heartened by a sharper mental focus that allowed him to follow all the way through on races that weren't as fast as he expected.
Ryan Cochrane, seen in August, was a teen among men on the podium in Beijing, just about the last time he's snuck up on anyone in international compeition. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images) Cochrane, not yet 20 at the time, was the heartwarming story in the pool for Canada at the Beijing Games. He was the only one of the country's 10 swim finalists to hit the podium, becoming the country's first Olympic swimming medallist in eight years.
While he came out of nowhere to the typical Canadian sports fan with his bronze swim in the 1,500 in China, Cochrane said that, physically speaking, an Olympic gold should have been the result. The more battle hardened Mellouli and Grant Hackett of Australia ultimately touched the wall faster than Cochrane.
Embrace the pain
The 2009 championships in Rome showed there was still room for growth in that respect. Cochrane won silver in the 800 and bronze in the 1,500, but got out too fast in the 400 and slipped to seventh.
"The last couple of years I've been working more heavily with sports psych for trying to be ready for the pain that comes with a race and embrace it as a good part of the race," he said. "We know that I'm able to clear lactic acid out of my muscles faster than most other people, we've done tests, so knowing that in the back of my mind is real encouraging."
And then there's the part about always being grateful for what has been transpired in his life as a result of athletic ability and a lot of hard work.
"I think it's just trying to come back to the reason I swim," Cochrane said. "I think for a while I got lost and I was just swimming because that's what I've always done. I'm trying to re-love the sport and embrace every day of it."
Canada ended the Pan Pac competition with 11 medals — Cochrane's two golds and a silver, plus veteran Brent Hayden's silver and seven bronze. It was the highest total for Swimming Canada at the event since earning 11 at the 1999 meet in Sydney.
The fledgling team should be able to spread its wings more in Delhi without having to contend with the deep American powerhouse. The Canadian team will be tested by the best from countries like Australia, England, South Africa and Scotland, but appear poised to do better than in the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, where just one of 16 swimming medals was golden.
The technical programs and high performance centres have a boon to a hungry and not insignificant number of talented swimmers, according to Cochrane.
"Own the Podium has been just unbelievable for us," he said. "We have sports psych, nutrition, sports science, video analysis — anything we need is available to us in Victoria.
"I also think it's just the mindset of the national team. It wasn't that everyone didn't want to win, I just don't think we talked about it [enough]."
A member of an Island Swimming Club that has faithfully supplied Canadian swimmers to every Olympic Games since 1984, Cochrane expects positive results in Delhi for stablemates Julia Wilkinson, Alexa Komarnycky and Mackenzie Downing, as well as fellow 1,500 racer Sean Penhale.
Cochrane doesn't consider himself a vocal leader despite his greater accomplishments, hoping that he can provide an even-keel approach outside of the pool that will have a positive effect on the less experienced among the 27-member team Canada will send to India. He wouldn't rule out being a part of the men's 4 x 200 relay team in Delhi, though it's not guaranteed.
As far as his individual races, it appears Cochrane would have a clear path to victory in the 400 and 1,500 (the 800 is not being contested). Hackett is retired and Olympic gold winner Park Tae-Hwan of South Korea, the only one to beat Cochrane in Irvine, is not from a Commonwealth country.
It wasn't so long ago that Cochrane was feeling no pressure as the hunter, so he's now prepared to race either committed rivals or the clock.
"I used to be the up-and-comer so it's weird to think that I have the target on my back now for the guys who are now just coming on the international scene," Cochrane said.
"You never know who's going to have the breakout season and the breakout competition," he added.
Spoken like a battle-tested veteran.
