SOAR – Road to Rio

July 21, 2016

GlassSKY is thrilled to interview Rosie MacLennan, announced today on Parliament Hill as Team Canada’s flag bearer in Rio!

 

Road to Rio

By Alyson Queen

As the youngest of four, Rosannagh (Rosie) MacLennan often tagged along to her older siblings’ trampoline lessons. It didn’t take long before she was hooked. Rosie started competing internationally at age 11 and was Canadian National Women’s Champion in 2005, 2009 and 2011.

At the 2012 Olympic Games in London, Rosie earned Canada’s only gold medal at the Games – and achieved a personal best. Now she’s off to Rio to once again represent her country. 

Rosie is a recent graduate of the University of Toronto with a bachelor’s degree in Physical Education and Health. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in exercise science, also at U of T.

Q&A with our Golden Girl:

GlassSKY:  You are on the road to Rio! How are you doing?! Are you counting down the days?

Rosie: I am doing well!  I am getting excited and really focused on training, making that last push. Things are definitely going in the right direction but I am happy to have a few more weeks to prepare. I am not counting down specific days but do have an idea of how long I have so I can plan my training.

GlassSKY:   What does it feel like to represent your country?

Rosie: It is an incredible honour to represent your country. Anytime I put on a Team Canada uniform, I feel very proud. Firstly because Canada is a great country but also because it is an absolute privilege to be representing your country in something you love. Each time I put on the Maple Leaf, it represents the entire journey to that moment.

GlassSKY:  In sports, each event is unique. The competitors, the outcome, your performance – they’re all different . Sometimes you soar to gold and other times you probably have to reflect on what happened. How do you deal with the ups and downs that come with being an Olympian athlete?

Rosie: With any sport, especially trampoline, there are a lot of ups and downs (haha punny, right?). I always try to keep in mind why I do the sport. I hold on to that love of training, the love of doing skills and perfecting them. I know that my capability as an athlete is not defined by one competition. I also truly believe that you need those downs. You need them to test you. You need them to learn. You need them to gain perspective and strength. No athlete reaches the Olympics without some adversity but it’s the grit and resilience that get you through, along with an entire list of people who support me and are there for me every step of the way. They help give me strength.

GlassSKY:  How do you mentally prepare for your events?

Rosie: There is a lot that I do to mentally prepare for events. I always try and imagine what the environment will be and I work with a sport psychologist to prepare for a lot of different situations. At the event, I have a routine that I do. I will listen to certain music to put me in the right mental state. Before competing, I do a lot of deep breathing and imagine my routine in my head, focusing in on what I need to pay attention to in each part. I try to keep it simple and when I get nervous, I focus on my love of the sport and the fact that I am living my dream.

GlassSKY: We’ve heard so much about the dangers and challenges of concussions. You had one. Talk to us about what happened and how that has affected you. Has your routine changed at all as a result?

Rosie: My recent concussion was probably the hardest challenge I have faced in my athletic career yet – physically and emotionally. It was a challenge because physically I felt perfectly healthy and in some ways stronger than I ever had, but there was something off. I experienced headaches and pressure in my head. At the beginning, I had trouble coming up with words and putting together sentences. Any mental task, including carrying on conversations was very challenging and exhausting. Over time, with the support of many different health professionals, I was able to retrain the parts of my brain that experienced dysfunction. The most challenging and lasting part was issues with spatial awareness. I would get dizzy in the air and my eyes would have trouble staying stable which, when you are flipping and twisting, is not ideal. I did a lot of eye exercises to, again, retrain parts of my brain and still do these now. This experience definitely set me back but I am doing my best to catch up.

GlassSKY: Olympic dreams run in your family. Tell us a bit about your grandfather and what his experience taught you.

Rosie: My grandfather was a gymnast for U of T. He qualified for the 1940 Olympics for gymnastics but because war broke out, he never had the chance to compete. He was an engineer and was stationed in Guelph during the war. When I was young and started talking about wanting to go the Olympics, he was always supportive and encouraging. In the months leading up to my first chance at qualifying, he would always give me words of encouragement. It was a long shot for me to qualify for the 2008 Olympic Games but he never doubted me. At the World Championships that year, hosted in Quebec, our chance to qualify for the Olympics, he was in the stands. I was sitting with my teammates during the last flight and when the final girl went and we realized we had earned two spots, everyone on our team and our families jumped up and started cheering. I looked back and he was sitting in his seat with a huge grin and tears running down his face. He gave me a huge hug and told me he knew I could do it. Two weeks before we left for Beijing, I was at his cottage and after a long day outside, we all sat around as he shared his Olympic journey with us and told us of his experience in the war. I will forever cherish that moment. It was that week that he passed away.

His experience taught me to always keep pushing, always give yourself every chance to do your best. If you are going to go after something, do it with all your might, never look back, and enjoy every moment. Go through your journey with compassion and support those around you. Be thankful for the experiences. Don’t feel sorry for yourself in the tough moments but experience them for what they can give you — strength and resilience.

GlassSKY: Sometimes there is sacrifice involved. Has that been the case for you, to get where you are?

Rosie: I do not feel like I have made any sacrifices. I believe that in life, we are presented with options and we have the opportunity to make choices. I have made a lot of decisions in my life to follow a certain path but I do not see any of it as a sacrifice. Sport has afforded me so many incredible opportunities and I am so thankful to have the privilege to live my dream.

GlassSKY: You’re young, you’re strong, and you’re going to the Olympics. You’re a role model for so many young women – some of whom are probably close to your own age. What is your advice to them? What have you learned in your journey so far in life?

Rosie: Chase the dream and love the journey. In every experience, there are lessons to be learned. Have the courage to chase your dream; the dream is about more than the moment you reach it. It is about all of the moments leading up to it. Be present in the journey and enjoy it. You never know where you are going to end up, but if you stay true to your passions, if you open your heart and your mind to opportunity, you will wind up somewhere great. Chase the dream, love the journey.

GlassSKY: Talk to us a bit more about role models. Who has inspired and motivated you, and why?

Rosie: There are so many people who have inspired me and motivated me in my life. I find role models in all aspects of my life but in sport, two people have had significant roles in inspiring my imagination and motivating me: my coach Dave Ross and my teammate Karen Cockburn.

Karen was the one who changed my childhood dream of being an Olympian into an actual goal. The Olympics always captivated me but it was when I watched her qualify for the first ever Olympics that trampoline would be in, watched her train over the next year and then in 2000, watched her stand on the podium — I knew then that I wanted to follow in her footsteps. She has guided me and supported me in my entire athletic career.

Dave has been my coach for 17 years. He has always been able to inspire my imagination and stretch what I believed to be within the realm of possibility. It is because of him that I love pushing the limits and seeing how far I can go. He motivates me to keep pushing.

GlassSKY: Give us a little insight into the real Rosie. If you could be doing anything else right now (because you have so much time…), what would it be?

Rosie: I honestly don’t know what I would be doing. I love my sport, I love training and I can’t imagine being anywhere else or doing anything else at this point. I do have ideas of other things I want to do which include travel (competing gives you a great idea of where you want to go back to). I plan to finish my Masters of Science at U of T after Rio and would love to do an MBA at some point. When I am not training, I love spending time being active outside (wake boarding, wake surfing and biking in the summer, snowboarding and skiing in the winter) so I would likely be doing more of that. I love spending time with family and friends. I also really enjoy reading.

This article is part of our SOAR series profiling remarkable female role models by guest writer, Alyson Queen.