Ryan Mallette has been named the head coach of the Canadian team that will head to Windsor, Ontario this December to compete in front of a home crowd at the 2016 World Short Course Swimming Championships.
The 36-year old, who is the head coach of the Swimming Canada High Performance Centre – Victoria is the personal coach of Olympic bronze medalist Hilary Caldwell, who won bronze in the 200 back at the Olympic Games. Other Olympic swimmers that train at the HPC include Ryan Cochrane, and he was also assigned to Sydney Pickrem, Taylor Ruck, and Katerine Savard as an assistant at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
“We’re trying to have athletes come on, expect to progress and then do it,” Mallette said. “We’re trying to normalize success and I think we’ve done a really good job of that at the Olympics. We talked about how no one was overwhelmed. For everyone to come in and succeed was normal and that’s what we want to continue forward into the next quad.”
Canada announced its roster for the 2016 World Short Course Championships back in May. Cochrane, the country’s only medalist at the 2014 Short Course World Championships, was on that original roster, but has since pulled out of the meet (as have several other originally-named swimmers). Caldwell, however, is still planning to be a part of the team.
Full Canadian Coaching Staff for 2016 Short Course World Championships
- Ryan Mallette, High Performance Center – Victoria, Head Coach
- Ben Titley, High Performance Centre – Ontario, assistant (Olympic head coach)
- Tom Johnson, UBC Dolphins, assistant
- Claude St. Jean, CAMO Natation, assistant
- Linda Kiefer, University of Toronto, assistant
- Kevin Thorburn, Etobicoke, assistant
- Mike Blondall, University of Calgary, assistant
- Peter Schori, University of Lethbridge, assistant