Calgary contingent excited about diving in city-hosted Canada Cup

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Home sweet home.

It’s how the strong contingent of Calgary divers is taking in the 2024 Canada Cup of Diving, beginning Thursday at the MNP Community & Sport Centre.

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Each of the city’s six-pack of Diving Canada athletes is using the four-day event differently — depending on their respective goals — but there’s no holding back the excitement of performing in a place where the passion for the sport first took hold of them.

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“I don’t even know where to begin,” said Thomas Ciprick, who joins Margo Erlam, Aimee Wilson, Luc Goertzen, Tazman Abramowicz and Ernest Braitenbach as Calgarians slated to dive in the this year’s annual international event.

“This is where I started diving,” continued the 21-year-old Ciprick. “This is where I fell in love with the sport, and this is where I really started to excel at a national level and even at a junior international level, so it was really the foundation of my career. So being back here competing almost eight years after I moved away is pretty significant for me.”

Especially since Ciprick has been out of competition since October, trying to find his groove again in the diving world.

“My last competition was the Pan American Games in Chile, and that wasn’t a good competition for me,” said Ciprick, now in his third season on Diving Canada’s senior squad. “It kind of started to affect my confidence and my mental health, and I was kind of spiralling a bit. I I was losing motivation to train. I didn’t believe in myself. So I decided that I needed to take a bit of a pause for for a bit of time.

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“There’s no better place really for me to get back into it, where it all started.”

As the host venue through Sunday, the MNP Community & Sport Centre will showcase more than 80 of the world’s élite divers from 15 nations, including Australia, China, Cuba, Czechia, Finland, Germany, Mexico, Netherlands, Portugal, Puerto Rico, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Sweden and the United States.

Thursday’s schedule features men’s three-metre preliminaries at 10 a.m. followed by women’s 10M preliminaries at 12:30 p.m., men’s 3M repechage at 3:05 p.m. and women’s 10M repechage at 4:55 p.m.

More prelims and repechages follow Friday before finals take place on Saturday and Sunday.

While Calgary’s Olympic threat Caeli McKay isn’t in tow, as she’s fresh off the World Cup circuit and preparing for the 2024 Paris Summer Games in July, Ciprick and 15 of his Canadian teammates are out to put on a show.

“Good vibes here, for sure,” said Ciprick, who’s making a “progressive return” with a simple list of dives in the men’s 3M competition. “I mean … this is where I started. So there’s always that sentiment of home here for me.

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“The last time I competed here was the Canada Cup in 2019, and that was my first-ever senior international competition. I didn’t do too bad. There was a big field of divers, and I was one of the youngest ones in the group. And I was 17th out of 41 or something. So for me, in my first senior international competition at that age, I was pretty pleased.”

This meet marks a first-time home-pool senior international competition for Goertzen, another of the Calgarians scheduled to make a splash at MNP this weekend.

“I’m a bit nervous being back here,” admitted 16-year-old Goertzen, who moved to Saskatoon to train two years ago. “But honestly, I really love it, because this was the pool that I grew up at, so this is kind of where it all started. It’s my home, and it’s a home crowd. So pretty happy.”

He should be given the buzz around him.

Goertzen is garnering some attention among Canadian divers as both a 3M-springboard and 10M-platform up-and-coming diver.

“This year, I really decided it was kind of my time to put in the work,” Goertzen said. “When I moved to Saskatoon, my focus really was on diving. And I’ve been training really consistently pretty hard for the past six months since the beginning of the season, and the results are really showing off, so I’m really proud of how it’s turning out.”

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Turns out he does still have a shot of qualifying for the Paris Olympics in the 10M event.

However, Goertzen knows there’s a more realistic chance of making the team in 2028, especially with the likes of Benjamin Tessier and Nathan Zsombor-Murray owning more experience ahead of him during this Olympic cycle.

“Yeah … I’m mostly here for the experience, especially this year, because I am so young,” Goertzen said. “I feel like it’d be nice to get an Olympic trials under my belt, see how I do and be ready for the next one.”

He feels this home meet will certainly help him build for those Canadian trials, scheduled for May 17-19 in Windsor, Ont.

“I’m just pretty excited to be here, honestly,” added Goertzen. “It was hard for the first little bit after moving to Saskatoon, because I missed my parents and stuff. But we did find a way to manage where I could come home every once in a while and see my family.

“And it’s nice being back for this.”

tsaelhof@postmedia.com

http://www.x.com/ToddSaelhofPM

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