Just getting into the water at the Michener swimming pool is a chore for Tammy Cunnington but once the Red Deer resident gets going it’s nothing but pure enjoyable effort and reward.
The 40 year old member of the Catalina Swim Club recently returned from Toronto where she took on the best para swimmers in the country and blew them out of the water.
Her expectations going into the trials were to make the team and swim some times which would be fast enough to put her on the plane to the games in Rio later this summer.
“I had a fantastic week,” she said.
There’s an understatement.
She hit the water for five races, the most important being the first race of the meet which was the 50 metre free style. She figured this would be the one which could clinch a spot on Team Canada.
“To be honest I didn’t have the race I wanted to have that morning and I was a little bit worried. That was one of the instances where Coach Mandi (Smith) had to treat me the same as the kids and give me a calm down and a pep talk and settle down, it’s o.k. kind of conversation.”
It definitely worked as she swam a personal best that night, breaking a Canadian record. She went into breast stroke Tuesday morning with the mindset to beat her best time, which she did by almost five seconds, breaking another Canadian record. That night in the final she proceeded to break the record she set that morning.
The success just set her up for the next day as she swam in her new race, the 150 metre IM.
“ I took four seconds off my best time in the morning and it was a really great swim but my coach had a couple of points where she thought I could have gone faster so we went back that night and took five more seconds off for a total of nine seconds that day.”
On day four she swam the 50 metre fly and took three seconds off the World record she had set back in December of 2015 and then took another two tenths of a second off that in the evening swim. Dedication and hard work is a part of the formula for her success but she says her coach is always on her about her technique and improving all the time. The pattern of success comes as no surprise to Coach Smith.
“Any challenge she’s given she is quick to accept and exceed any expectations.With all of the limitations that have been presented to her, they don’t stop her at all.”
At the age of six Tammy was in the crowd watching an air show in Ponoka when a plane trying to land encountered some trouble and she was struck by it. It left her with no use of her legs and about 25% use of her left arm. For many people that would spell the end of any physical activity. Not for Tammy as she comes from a family which was always involved in sports. This really helped her move past the freak accident.
“As soon as my rehab had taken me to a point where I could get back doing things it was a kind of a no-brainer,” she said. “We just turned to wheel chair sports and progressed from there.”
She was part of the national wheelchair basketball team which won gold in 1994 at the world championships in England. She moved away from sports after that and focused her energy on other things including going to college but she made a return to the athletics ring in 2000 with training for a triathlon.It was then she got interested in swimming competitions.
“For triathlon I learned to swim but only backstroke which at the time was the only stroke I could do,” she said. “So at the time I was doing open water triathlon’s backstroke which was challenging.”
About 18 months ago she made the decision to learn three other strokes under the guidance of Catalina coach Mandi Smith.
“We flipped her over for the first time ever a year and a half ago and she learned how to do some freestyle, some breast stroke and some butterfly,” said Smith. “It was exciting and interesting at first. Everything we did was try and fail and try again and we found some things that worked really well for her.”
For Tammy, her physical fitness level is very high so most of the work is on technique to get her through the water as fast as possible, said Smith.
The work is paying off given her results at the Olympic trials and the reward at the end of the week is the opportunity to wear the maple leaf down in South America. It’s something she values.
“I don’t think anyone is as lucky as we are to wear our maple leaf or it means as much to anybody as it does to Canadians and to have that red or white maple leaf on my chest and have Canada on my shoulders on the back means the world to me.”
She has five months to work on taking even more time off of her swims and adding more race experience under her belt now.
Her performance to this point has made a mark on the young swimmers who share the pool with her in Red Deer.
“ It’s amazing to have her here with these able bodied athletes because these kids are amazing athletes and they’re gifted physically so when they see how hard she works just to do small tasks that they do without thinking it’s really great to have her here. What she’s doing basically, with a quarter of the limbs she is able to accomplish what everyone else is trying to do as well,” said Smith.
Tammy loves the fact she can lead by example and show how hard work and dedication can take you closer to your goals in sports as well as other aspects of your life. It’s a solid statement of what a person can do when they put their mind to the task.
“It may take me a lot more work to make my body do things than it does for other people but it’s what makes me happy and I like the excitement of pushing and seeing a faster time on the stop watch and hearing Mandi call out a time which was faster than I had gone before.”
The next level of competition awaits her in Rio and she’s ready for the challenge as she has been all her life.
“I just want to go there and rock it and have a good performance.”
Watch out Rio!
