FOR a guy who's headed off to the Olympic Games in the demanding sport of freestyle swimming, North Vancouver native Blake Worsley was introduced to the sport in a manner that doesn't immediately bring to mind rippling muscles and athletic excellence.
A hockey and baseball player at the North Shore Winter Club, eight-year-old Worsley would kill downtime by goofing around in the club's swimming pool, creating a ruckus while other kids were busy working on their backstrokes. He was always clear about it though - he was just goofing.
"One day my mom was like, 'You know Blake, I want you to get in and swim with these guys,'" Worsley recalled in a recent interview with the North Shore News. "I was like, 'No way. . . . Mom, there's no way I'm getting in the water with these guys.'"
That's when his mother channeled an old parenting standby to get her son to take the plunge.
"She's like, 'You know what Blake, if you get in there right now I will take you to McDonald's,'" said Worsley. "The rest is history."
With the fast food chain a major Olympic sponsor and Worsley, now 24, headed to his first Olympic Games, the story has come full circle.
"I get free McDonald's at the Olympics now!" he said. A tasty burger may have gotten Worsley into the pool but it didn't make him an instant success. He first 50-m freestyle race did not go well.
"All the way across the pool I was crying, I was holding onto the lane rope," he said. "My grandpa was walking up and down the pool with me and I remember him egging me on, like, 'Get going Blake. Finish, finish, finish.' I was just drowning, but from then I got my stride."
When Worsley was 10 years old his family moved to Steamboat Springs, Colo., ending his Winter Club connection. The recollections are fuzzy from those North Shore days but what he does recall is all good.
"I had one coach growing up and her name was Noodles, she had this curly hair. I just remember a good time. It was a lot of fun. It was summer swimming, it was kind of laid back."
It was also the start of a swimming career that would eventually lead Worsley all the way to the Olympics. He booked his ticket to the London Games by finishing first in the 200metre freestyle at the Olympic trials held March 27 in Montreal. Worsley tried out for the 2008 Games but was a long shot from the start and didn't qualify. This time around, however, he was the swimmer to beat and felt the pressure. When he popped out of the water and saw his name listed first, his reaction was more of a sigh than a scream.
"I felt relieved," he said. "There's a lot of pressure swimming at those trial meets. It's quite a different experience when you're seeded first and you have to swim through that and just do what you know how to do to make the team. I think it's kind of a load off now that I'm on the team and I can just work hard and see who I can surprise when I get to the Olympics."
His trials time of 1: 49.06 was more than 2.5 seconds slower than Brent Hayden's Canadian record and seven seconds off the world record time. Worsley said his next few months will be spent doing everything he can to close those gaps.
"I want to be faster than what I am. I think that's a good place to be in, I guess," he said. "(There are) a lot of things I need to work on for the summer. It's fun and it's good to be in the moment and win the (Olympic trial) but I just feel there's a lot more I can do. I'm a lot more capable than even what I performed there."
Worsley now lives and trains in Victoria but still has strong ties to the North Shore despite moving away more than a decade ago. His grandmother, Barbara Green, still lives here, along with an aunt and uncle. And thanks to some old family ties he has a sponsorship deal with the Hollyburn Country Club swim team that offers him financial support while getting him involved with young athletes at swim clinics and other events, bringing him back into the pool in the place where it all started. There's no need for hamburger bribes now though - going for gold is all the motivation he needs.
"I am extremely thrilled and super amped," he said, picturing what it will be like to lean over the water in the seconds before that first Olympic race. "It's going to be fun. I'm in a beautiful position because I've got nothing to lose, I can go out there and just rip it up."
