Canada announced its Olympic team — here are some fun facts about the athletes | CBC Sports

The Canadian Olympic Committee today unveiled its team of 338 athletes for the Paris Summer Games. That’s fewer than the 371 named for the Tokyo Games three years ago, but still one of the country’s largest Olympic delegations ever.

Competition in Paris begins next Wednesday with some men’s soccer and rugby sevens games, but Canada doesn’t have a team in either event. Canadians see their first action the following day in archery and a women’s soccer match vs. New Zealand.

The opening ceremony is on Friday July 26, featuring a first-of-its-kind boat parade of athletes on the Seine river. Canada will announce its flag-bearers (expected to be a woman and a man) sometime in the coming days.

Here are some interesting facts and figures about the Canadian Olympic team:

The clear majority of them are women. Excluding the 22 alternates on the team, 61 per cent of the athletes named today “identify as female or are competing in women’s events,” according to the COC. Women are also expected to win the bulk of Canada’s medals. They account for 13 of the 20 (65 per cent) projected by the data company Nielsen’s Gracenote.

The oldest athlete is 61-year-old equestrian rider Jill Irving. The first-time Olympian will compete in dressage after helping Canada to a team gold at the 2019 Pan American Games. Irving is two years older than men’s equestrian rider Mario Deslauriers, who’s back for his fourth Olympics after being Canada’s eldest athlete at the 2021 Tokyo Games. Deslauriers made his Olympic debut way back in 1984.

The youngest athlete is 14-year-old skateboarder Fay De Fazio Ebert. She won gold in the women’s park event at last year’s Pan Am Games, when she was still 13. De Fazio Ebert is 24 years younger than fellow Canadian Olympic skateboarder Ryan Decenzo, who turns 38 in a few days. She’s 36 years younger than British rider Andy Macdonald, who will be 51 by the end of the month.

Canada’s best athlete is also a teenager. Seventeen-year-old swimming sensation Summer McIntosh is favoured to win two individual gold medals and could add a few more in solo and relay events at her second Olympic Games. She debuted as a 14-year-old in Tokyo, where she placed fourth in both the 400m freestyle and 4x200m freestyle relay and cracked the top 11 in her two other individual events. Since then, she’s won back-to-back world titles in both the 200m butterfly and 400m individual medley.

The most experienced Olympian is table tennis player Mo Zhang. The 35-year-old will be competing in her fifth consecutive Games after finishing a career-high ninth in both singles and doubles in Tokyo. 142 of Canada’s athletes have Olympic experience, including 38 medallists, while 174 are rookies.

The most decorated Olympian is swimmer Penny Oleksiak. She collected an all-time Canadian record seven medals over the past two Summer Games. That includes her stunning four-medal performance in 2016 in Rio, where she won an individual gold as a 16-year-old. Now seemingly in the winter of her career at the age of 24, Oleksiak did not qualify for any individual events in Paris but could add to her medal collection in the relays. If she doesn’t, Andre De Grasse will have a better chance to catch her. The track star hopes to contend for the podium in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m events after winning a medal in all three of them at two straight Olympics.

There are 10 children of past Olympians. They include men’s basketball star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, whose mother, Charmaine Gilgeous, was a sprinter for Antigua and Barbuda at the 1992 Barcelona Games; and his fellow NBAer RJ Barrett, whose father, Rowan, played with Steve Nash in 2000 in Sydney and is now the team’s GM. Equestrian rider Amy Millar’s dad, Ian, appeared in a world-record 10 Olympic Games in that sport, while Summer McIntosh’s mom, Jill Horstead, swam in the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

There are five sets of siblings. And they each compete in the same sport. Women’s judo sisters Christa and Kelly Deguchi are, thankfully, in different weight classes. Melvin Ejim and his sister Yvonne Ejim can cheer for each other in men’s and women’s basketball, while mountain bikers Gunnar and Isabella Holmgren are also separated by gender. Twin sisters Katherine and Michelle Plouffe share the court in women’s 3×3 basketball, while sailors Antonia Lewin-LaFrance and Georgia Lewin-LaFrance are quite literally in the same boat.

Read more about the Canadian team in this story from the COC.