After injury and heartbreak of Tokyo Games, Dive Calgary grad takes health, experience and willpower into 2024 Olympics
Caeli McKay is healthy for her second Summer Games.
The Calgary diver is more experienced, as well.
And we know the 25-year-old Canadian star athlete is a warrior.
But a medallist?
That’s what is missing from her Olympic story.
“I do consider myself a medal threat,” declared McKay, a star graduate of Dive Calgary. “I’m feeling good, and I’ve been consistently around top five in the world. So I can see myself being a threat if I’m really on.
“And I plan to be very on.”
Indeed, McKay is at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris looking to be ‘very on’ in the women’s 10-metre platform event.
She is Calgary’s biggest individual medal threat at this Olympiad — made more possible than ever because of improved health, experience and willpower.
Recall that she suffered an ugly ankle sprain in training just weeks ahead of the Tokyo Games but nearly pushed her way to a podium placement anyway, falling just a heartbreaking half-point shy of the bronze medal with partner Meghan Benfeito in the women’s 10-metre synchronized platform event.
“I even look back now, and I don’t really know how I was able to do it, because it was a really serious injury,” McKay said. “I really proved to myself that I can really do whatever I put my mind to.
“When I hurt my ankle, I wasn’t able to train that much prior to the Olympics within that last month, so it was all about visualizing the dives,” continued McKay. “So leading up into these Games, I have still been doing the same kind of visualization and training a whole lot more. And I think that’s really gonna be beneficial for me.”
Of course, staying healthy — being “put in bubble wrap” as her parents, Mark and Kathy, put it — has helped, too.
“I used to play soccer at the same time as diving, and I always used to get hurt at soccer,” McKay said. “So my parents used to say, ‘We’re going to wrap you in bubble wrap for soccer, so you can go diving after — diving’s still the priority.’
“So I wrap myself in bubble wrap for a few weeks (ahead of the Games). I’m giving it all at training, but I wrap myself in bubble wrap to make sure that I’m getting to the Olympics in one piece and able to enjoy it the way I’ve been able to enjoy training.”
Now just hours ahead of her first event — that’s the 10-metre synchronized final with Ottawa’s Kate Miller early Wednesday at the Aquatics Center in Saint-Denis, France (3 a.m. MT) — the “bubble wrap” has come off.
Although the Canadian pairing did earn bronze at the 2023 Pan Am Games, the synchro adventure is a warm-up, really, for McKay, as she readies herself for a significant podium push in next week’s 10m platform individual discipline set for Monday — with the preliminary (2 a.m. MT) and semifinal (7 a.m. MT) — and Tuesday — with the final (7 a.m. MT).
“I’m really appreciating my health at this point,” McKay said. “That last Olympics, I was just happy to be there at that point, but for the whole time I was with Meghan, I was really shooting for a medal — and that was the goal. And we almost got that when I had one ankle.
“So this time around — with two ankles — I’m really hoping for a good strong result and just keeping my body together. I’m really happy to be where I am now and what I learned through my last Olympics, even though it wasn’t necessarily the most enjoyable with my ankle. I think it’s benefiting me long-term, especially with my mental game and all that.”
In the individual 10m competition, McKay is challenged by the brilliance of two Chinese divers — “unbeatable” she says — in Yuxi Chen and Hongchan Quan, American Delaney Schnell, Great Britain’s Andrea Spendolini Sirieix and Mexicans Alejandra Orozco Loza and Gabriela Agundez Garcia.
Synchro partner Miller, 19, has also qualified for a spot.
“I definitely know who is my main competition, and I know their strengths,” said McKay, who can draw off her bronze effort at last year’s World Aquatics Championships. “But I don’t necessarily pay direct attention to my competitors going into it.
“Definitely the intensity of the event really helps me put good dives down — I feed off it. But I’ve really learned not to worry about other athletes, because I can’t control them. I can only control myself.
“Of course, it’s always on my mind — I always want to be an Olympic medallist,” added McKay, who is married to two-time Olympian diver Vincent Riendeau. “But I know that the way to get there is by achieving those smaller goals that I set myself — with the consistency, the power and the strength — and not holding back and trusting myself. So I’m going into it with that kind of mindset.
“And if I do all those things and I achieve all those little goals, even if I don’t medal, I know that I’ve still achieved what I was setting out to do for myself.”