On His Fifth Try, Dr. Jeremy Bagshaw Will See the Olympics Now

Photo Courtesy: Swimming Canada/Daniel Harrison

On His Fifth Try, Dr. Jeremy Bagshaw Will See the Olympics Now

Jeremy Bagshaw looked at the video board and wouldn’t let himself believe it at first.

For five Olympic cycles, from a 16-year-old prodigy from British Columbia in 2008 to a 32-year-old medical school graduate who’d been to four World Championships, Bagshaw had chased a spot in the Olympics. It represented, he came to accept, a glaring hole in an otherwise sterling career CV.

So when Bagshaw hit the wall at Canadian Olympic Trials in Toronto in May, he needed a moment to process what the board was telling him – not just for the stakes of the moment but for what seemed among his many tribulations the sheer unlikelihood of a break going his way.

He saw the “4” next to his name, tallied up the times and saw that it all made sense to provisionally get him a spot on the 800 free relay. But he was going to need confirmation, after so many near-misses along the way, that what he was seeing was actually happening.

“I could see the four beside my name, and I wasn’t really sure,” Bagshaw told Swimming World recently. “And I looked down at the time, because looking at fifth place, it almost looked like it was the same exact time that I went. I was kind of confused, and it took me a little while.”

It has taken Bagshaw more than a little while to attain his ultimate goal of an Olympic berth. The former Cal swimmer will finally get that chance in Paris, just days before he relocates from Ireland to London to start a year-long medical internship.

Bagshaw’s career coda in Paris is the reward for years of powering through adversity. From four months out of the pool in 2021 while he decided if he wanted to continue competing to a pre-Trials reappraisal of all he’d achieved and all the pressure he placed on himself, Trials in Toronto was a test of his faith as much as anything.

Bagshaw passed it, and his reward is in Paris.

“Maybe if I keep trusting and keep going through it, something will fall in my favor eventually,” he said. “Because it can’t always be going against me.”

The long road to Paris

The ifs in Bagshaw’s career piled up long before he reached Toronto for what he braced for as maybe his final meet.

Jeremy Bagshaw at 2024 Olympic Trials; Photo Courtesy: Swimming Canada/Daniel Harrison

If Canada had qualified an 800 free relay for either the 2016 or 2021 Olympics, then his finishes of second and third, respectively, at Trials would’ve been enough to make him an Olympian.

If his time in 2021 in the 400 free was just a little faster, then his second-place result at Trials would’ve gotten him through.

And most painfully, if he had repeated at 2016 Trials the two 1:47s he’d posted in the spring and summer of 2015 in the 200 free, then he would’ve swum that event at Rio, relay or not.

None of those happened, though. Canada’s male 800 free relay endured an Olympic wilderness after the 2012 Games. A cornerstone that had made three straight Olympic finals dating to Atlanta in 1996, that had won silver at the 2005 World Championship, was no longer a program strong point.

That narrowed the Olympic path for the 200 and 400 free specialist. He finished eighth in the 200 at Olympic Trials at age 20 in 2012, then posted a second-place finish in 2016 and third in 2021, all with no relay to qualify for.

The former was the most acutely “heartbreaking.” In April 2015, Bagshaw went 1:47.48 in the 200 free at trials for Worlds, under the Rio Olympic automatic qualifying time of 1:47.97. He undercut that time again at Pan American Games in the summer at 1:47.92.

But at Olympic Trials, he couldn’t put together the right swim at the right time. He was first in prelims at 1:48.47 but second in the final at 1:48.20, short of the A cut and second by .03 to Markus Thormeyer. Neither swam it in Rio.

Bagshaw recovered from that disappointment to pursue the Tokyo Games. In between, he’d achieved plenty – Pan Ams, where he won relay bronze; a Commonwealth Games; a Pan Pacific Championships and three World Championships, long- and short-course. But Olympic qualification eluded him again in 2021, despite three top-three finishes, all short of the Olympic standards.

When Trials ended in the spring of 2021, Bagshaw thought long and hard about retirement. From May to October, he stayed out of the water. Having graduated from Berkeley in 2015 and gotten a master’s degree in kinesiology and exercise science at the University of Victoria in 2018, he had plenty outside of the pool to devote his attentions to, and he undertook a long process of taking stock of what he wanted professionally and athletically.

What kept nagging at him, though, was a suspicion that he had more to give. His times at Tokyo trials weren’t great – 1:49.55 and 1:49.60, in the 200, the A cut swimming away from him. But he just had a feeling that he had one more great 200 left in him. And if he could summon that at the right meet … it felt too real not to chase that.

“I think I just missed swimming and knew I had something in me,” he said. “That Olympics was the one piece that was missing. I just figured, would I probably regret it if I didn’t try again?”

A reversal of fortune

The plan Bagshaw formulated at the end of 2019 seemed orderly. He would train through Trials in the spring of 2020. If he didn’t make the Olympics, that would likely be his farewell. If he did, then the curtain would fall in Tokyo. He would get his moment on the Olympic stage then start med school in the fall at the University of Limerick in Ireland, the latest move for a Singapore native who has called many places home.

Instead, the COVID-19 pandemic descended. With the Olympics postponed a year, Bagshaw still started his studies in the fall of 2020, but the hybrid nature of his dual bachelor’s of medicine/surgery studies made it more amendable to the life of an elite swimmer.

“I knew I still had another good swim, another good 200 freestyle in me,” he said. “And knowing that I was still in school, it wasn’t like I was going into work right away, so I still had the opportunity. So I might as well keep swimming.”

That flexibility tipped the balance in the fall of 2021, after his Tokyo dreams didn’t pan out. It was, in retrospect, one of the rare breaks in his favor.

From his European perch, Bagshaw continued to improve. He swam for Canada at Worlds in 2022 in Budapest, then at the Commonwealth Games. He was supposed to swim in Fukuoka at Worlds in 2023, though quotas of relay-only swimmers meant he traveled but didn’t take part. In the ultimate tale of Bagshaw’s journey, knowing how vital that relay’s Paris qualification was to his own chances, it’s a signature twist that he was relegated to spectator status while his countrymen, for all intents and purposes, decided his fate.

The four in Fukuoka did the job, finishing 12th with a time of 7:10.67. Even if Trials nine months later didn’t go his way, at least Bagshaw could claim some credit for helping restoring the relay that he so admired as a child to the Olympic stage.

“That was a huge moment for me as a kid sort, seeing those Canadian swimmers get that medal (at Worlds in 2005). And I think it’s something that that relay has been quite a weak point for us in Canada for 19 years,” he said. “So it’s nice to see that this is the start of it and hopefully that some of these kids can be motivated coming up in the sport and getting that relay going for over the next few cycles.”

The last chance in Toronto

Those events added up to one – presumably, last – chance in Toronto. The last piece, though, was for Bagshaw to embrace the difficult of it all.

Once the meet started, Bagshaw was laser-focused. But before he got to the Pan Am Sports Centre, he sat with the enormity of what he was about to put himself through, of what it would mean to make it and what it would mean if he didn’t. From it, he distilled the motivation he needed – of all that he had achieved that made him capable of accomplishing that one thing that he hadn’t.

“A week out of the meet, I really sat down with myself and kind of evaluated my whole swimming career,” he said. “I saw everything that I’ve gotten to do and really appreciated the swimming journey that I’ve had because it’s been so long. But I think once the meet started, it’s harder to look at the bigger picture because I’m so focused on that one piece that was missing from my swimming resume.”

Bagshaw warmed up with a third-place finish in the 400 free. His time was six seconds shy of the A cut, which no Canadian man hit, and a second quicker than Ethan Ekk, 15 years his junior.

Two days later came the 200 free. Bagshaw, the oldest of the event’s 51 entrants, was sixth in prelims. With Josh Liendo and Finlay Knox scratching finals, all Bagshaw had to do was hold serve in the night session. The back-halfer was dead last at the midpoint but passed six of 10 swimmers on the third 50 to sit in the fourth place he needed. A lead group of 1:47s, led by winner Alex Axon and Patrick Hussey, the only of the four from Fukuoka in the final, separated. That left Bagshaw in the second group, from Lane 6, fighting it out to get his hand on the wall against the two swimmers to his right.

When the wash settled, three swimmers had clustered within .21 seconds: Filip Senc-Samardzic in 1:48.70. Antoine Suave in 1:48.53. And Bagshaw, fourth by .04, in 1:48.49.

“This is a sentimental one for a lot of the people on this pool deck,” is how CBC broadcaster Byron MacDonald recapped it live while choking back tears, “and some in the broadcast booth.”

One of those people on deck was the first person Bagshaw locked eyes with: Sandrine Mainville, an Olympic medalist in Rio. Both 32, she and Bagshaw have shared many a national team together through the years, though her career has long since ended. His joy reflected back through her helped make it feel real.

“We grew up swimming on national teams and junior national teams together,” Bagshaw said. “I think we both made our senior team in the same year. And seeing her and her excitement for me, that was when it set in. Oh, this is someone who I’ve gone through my swimming career with and seeing her was something that, that’s when it kind of hit me because she was so excited for me.”

Now comes the part Bagshaw has been dreaming about. Swimming Canada named him one of four captains for the Olympics. He’ll enjoy what might be his final swim in the 800 free in Paris, then head home briefly to Ireland before starting a year-long internship on Aug. 13. He’ll approach that swim with “the monkey off my back,” the surmounted Trials challenge his Everest.

With his age, with his hard-won wisdom, he’ll be the rookie taking in everything he can in the chance of a lifetime – a chance that, it seemed, took a lifetime.

“I’m excited and kind of glad that I’m an older rookie and getting the Olympic experience so much later in my career because I think I’m going to be able to appreciate it a lot more,” he said. “ … I think knowing that it’s probably one of my last swimming meets ever, most likely my last swimming meet ever, I can go through it a little bit slower and really soak everything in and have that appreciation for what it is.

“Finally making the team really took so much weight off of me that I’m so excited to finally get to race to the Olympics,” he continued. “It’s something I’ve wanted to do for so long.”

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