Rylan Wiens, a 19-year-old diver from Pike Lake, will be representing Canada at the Tokyo Olympics.
Wiens qualified for a berth with the Canadian Senior Men’s Diving team after placing second in the 2021 Canadian Diving Trials on July 1. Wiens and first-place finisher Nathan Zsombor-Murray will compete in the individual Men’s 10-meter event at the Olympics.
Wiens punched his ticket for his first Olympics after putting together a qualifying score of 983.05. He entered the trials with the highest pre-qualification score following his bronze medal performance at the World Cup and admittedly felt some additional pressure as the leader in the event.
“Definitely felt pressure, because the top three of us, we all had relatively similar scores,” Wiens is quoted as saying on the Diving Canada website. “Pretty much anyone could have won that event, whoever was on today, could have won the event. I know I just needed to put down a solid list. I had a lot of pressure on to do that list and I ended up pulling through, so I was quite happy with that.”
In media interviews over the Canada Day long weekend, Wiens said qualifying for the Olympics has been a life-long dream of his.
Wiens, a long-time member of the Saskatoon Diving Club, started diving at age six while attending a summer camp. He won his first junior nationals at age 10 and by 2015 he was convinced he has the ability to compete at the Olympic level.
He overcame a back injury at age 13, which kept him away from the pool for six months.
According to the Diving Canada website, Wiens enjoyed a big year in 2018 as a member of the FINA World Cup team, the Commonwealth Games team and the world junior squad. He reached finals at all three events including a fourth place on platform at the world juniors. At the Games, where he took eighth on platform and sixth on synchro platform with Bryden Hattie, he was the first diver from Saskatchewan since Ruben Ross to compete for Canada at a major Games.
In the summer of 2019, Wiens was the reigning senior and junior (group A) national champion on tower.
Wiens produced a solid start to the 2020 season with silver medal performances on three-metre and 10-metre at the FINA Grand Prix stop in Madrid. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Wiens focused exclusively on training.
Wiens is in his first-year kinesiology at the University of Saskatchewan.