After winning a silver medal at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Quebec diver Jennifer Abel is back home.
She and fellow diver Melissa Citrini-Beaulieu won silver in the women’s three-metre synchronized springboard.
“It means a lot,” she told Global News. “It means that now I can come back home and I’m two-time Olympic medalist.”
She won bronze in the same event with Émilie Heymans at the London 2012 Games, but she wasn’t so lucky in the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.
“I still had a lot to do after Rio,” she said. “I didn’t reach my full potential.”
She was determined to do that this year but had to overcome a lot.
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The diver pointed out that dealing with pressure is just part of being an elite athlete but this time, there was a great deal more of it.
“Because it has been a really tough year,” she said. “Going through the pandemic, not knowing if the game would be on.”
Abel added that the toughest part for athletes was knowing that the Games could be cancelled again even after arriving in Tokyo.
On top of that she had to deal with performance anxiety.
Sylvain Guimond, a doctor in sports psychology, explained that because that stress gets increasingly high as athletes get closer to competition, they need to be careful.
“Every athlete knows that the stress can also be used to help them perform well, as long as they can control that stress,” he said.
Abel agrees and said one way she coped was by remembering one thing that her coach told her.
“Pressure is a privilege because if you have pressure, it means you’re successful, that you are good at what you do,” she smiled, “and not everyone is.”
One person she turned to for support was boxer David Lemieux, who noted that Abel is strong.
“You throw something at her and she’ll make something beautiful out of it,” he said.
Lemieux also plans to continue supporting her in his own way. When she returned home, he asked Abel, his longtime partner, if she’d marry him.
“Yes,” Abel laughed. “Yes, I’m happy.”
Now she plans to take time to rest and consider her future.