Swimming Canada is making a concerted effort to up the level of their relays for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and beyond. Beginning in 2014, Canada began a Male Relay Takeoff Camps, where they gather young swimmers in order to educate them on the relay mindset. In 2015, females were added and this year, Swimming Canada announced that 30 swimmers and their coaches were invited to attend the event.
According to High Performance Director John Atkinson, “The concept is to identify our future national team members from a range of age groups in both males and females. We see who has the capacity to swim both the 100 and the 200-m freestyle, and then we bring them in.”
Following the creation of this program in 2014, the Canadian men and women competed in the 2015 World Championships in Kazan, Russia. In Kazan, the men did not swim the 4×200 Freestyle relay and finished 8th in the finals of the 4×100 freestyle relay. The Canadian women finished 5th in the 4×100 relay in Kazan and 11th in the 4×200 freestyle event.
Canada’s relays showed tremendous progress in Rio, where the women’s 4×100 and 4×200 freestyle relays earned bronze medals, finishing third. This comes after the women did not medal in either at the 2015 World Championships. The men were also able to improve on their World Championships performance from the previous year by finishing 7th in the 4×100 length event.
As Budapest quickly approaches, it will be interesting to see how the Canadians build off of the progress that they have made in the past few years since developing these relay camps.
The full list of swimmers and coaches that were invited is below:
| Samuel Bélanger | Rouge et Or/University Laval (Québec) | Nicholas Perron |
| Stephen Calkins | University of Calgary Swim Club (Alberta) | Brian Schrader |
| Ethan Fazekas | Windsor Aquatic Club (Ontario) | Mike McWha |
| Mackenzie Flowers | Edmonton Keyano Swim Club (Alberta) | Derrick Schoof |
| Ruslan Gaziev | Etobicoke Swim Club (Ontario) | Kevin Thorburn |
| Colin Gilbert | Kamloops Classic Swimming (British Columbia) | Brad Dalke |
| Emil Goin | Pointe-Claire Swim Club (Québec) | Martin Gingras |
| Justin Konik | Etobicoke Swim Club (Ontario) | Kevin Thorburn |
| Sean Murray | Mississauga Aquatic Club (Ontario) | Kevin Anderson |
| Carson Olafson | UBC Dolphins Swim Club (British Columbia), HPC Vancouver | Tom Johnson |
| Alexandre Perreault | Ottawa Swim Club (Ontario) | Blair Tucker |
| Alexander Pratt | Cascade Swim Club (Alberta) | Dave Johnson |
| Tai Long Singh | Winskill Dolphins (British Columbia) | Amy Canuel |
| Josh Zakala | Island Swimming (British Columbia), CSI Pacific NextGen Program | Brad Dingey |
| Paul Zou | Winskill Dolphins (British Columbia) | Amy Canuel |
| Brooklyn Douthwright | Codiac Vikings Aquatic Club (New Brunswick) | Dale Doucette |
| Aleksa Gold | Toronto Swim Club (Ontario) | Bill O’Toole |
| Jade Hannah | Island Swimming (British Columbia), CSI Pacific NextGen Program | Brad Dingey |
| Mary-Sophie Harvey | Neptune Natation (Québec), Intensive Training Program Montreal | Tom Rushton |
| Hanna Henderson | Etobicoke Swim Club (Ontario) | Kevin Thorburn |
| Faith Knelson | Island Swimming (British Columbia), CSI Pacific NextGen Program | Brad Dingey |
| Victoria Kwan | Markham Aquatic Club (Ontario) | Robert Novak |
| Octavia Lau | Hyack Swim Club (British Columbia) | Mark Bottrill |
| Kyla Leibel | Red Deer Catalina Swim Club (Alberta) | Scott Wilson |
| Jessica Luo | Pacific Coast Swimming (British Columbia) | Rod Barratt |
| Catherin Matte | Club de Natation Région de Québec (Québec) | Claude Lamy |
| Amanda McCallum | Richmond Rapids Swim Club (British Columbia) | Drew McClure |
| Ainsley McMurray | Côte St-Luc Aquatics (Québec) | Mike Calcutt |
| Isabel Sarty | Halifax Trojan Aquatic Club (Nova Scotia) | Chris Stone |
| Florence Vachon | Rouge et Or/Université Laval (Québec) | Johanne Girardin |