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www.insideHALTON.com | OAKVILLE BEAVER | Friday, July 29, 2016 | 58 Kevin Nagel Sports Editor sports@oakvillebeaver.com Sports "Connected to your Community" Mack Darragh will swim the butterfly on Canada's 4x100-metre medley relay. | Scott Grant -- Swim Canada Darragh to achieve one Olympic goal By Herb Garbutt Oakville Beaver staff When he was 11 years old, Mack Darragh had no doubt he was going to the Olympics. Asked to write down his goals at a swim camp, the Oakville swimmer boldly predicted he would be an Olympian -- by the time he was 14. If that seemed a little ambitious, he followed up with another fearless prediction. Four years later he would make the Canadian Olympic team again. Actually, make that teams. Darragh's master plan was to not only represent his country in swimming, but in basketball, too. Darragh had been playing basketball since he was seven, not long after he'd taken up swimming. In summer leagues he would fill the role of a small forward or shooting guard, though at that age he said there weren't really defined positions. Swimming began more out of necessity. "He had asthma and I researched it and it said the more cardio he did, the better chance he had of outgrowing it," said his mom Denise Darragh. "Swimming was one of the best sports for cardio, so I looked through the Yellow Pages, found the Oakville Aquatic Club and called them. The first day there, they started talking about swim meets. I had no idea I had signed him up for competitive swimming." Darragh didn't immediately take to the sport, but because of the benefits to his health, his mom insisted he give it another year or two. It was during that second year that Dar- ragh "found out I was pretty good at it." "At that age, they got a ribbon if they improved their times," his mom said. "You could see him shine when he left a meet with a fistful of ribbons." Two years after making his dual sport Olympic prediction, Darragh began to realize that to reach that level, he would have to choose one sport. "At one time, I almost picked basketball over swimming," he said. The final decision was made when he was 13 when he skipped the first day of basketball tryouts to go to a swim meet. · · · While Darragh didn't make the Olympic team at 14, he was quickly improving. "Mack has always had a great work ethic," said Oakville Aquatic Club coach Sean Baker. "Then he started to grow and once his body caught up to his work ethic, he really started to come on." Darragh felt he had a realistic chance of qualifying for the London Games. He was coming off a bronze-medal performance at the FINA World Junior Championships in Peru. He had set a Canadian age-group record in the 200-metre butterfly, breaking the two-minute mark for the first time, finishing in 1:59.31 -- a national 1517 age group record that still stands. To swim a best time and still not be happy with it... was heartbreaking. "Breaking two minutes is like the fourminute mile. It's a big deal," Baker said. "And he did it when it was most important." The following year, Darragh made the final at the Canadian Olympic trials but finished fifth, more than a second behind the time he posted at world juniors. "I was very hopeful for 2012 for the 200 fly, but I let my nerves get the best of me and I had a bad swim," he said. When this year's trials came around, the 22-year-old was again hopeful. Coming in with much more experience -- he represented Canada at the 2014 Pan Pacific Championships where he made the 200m butterfly final and competed in two NCAA championships with the University of Missouri -- Darragh came through, winning both the 100m and 200m butterfly. In Mack Darragh Olympic swimmer past years, that would have all but assured him of a spot on the Olympic team. But for this year's trials, swimmers had to meet the Olympic A standard. Darragh swam a personal best of 1:58.22 in the 200 fly, but that still left him short of the 1:56.97 he needed. "To swim a best time and still not be happy with it," Darragh said, "it was heartbreaking." One hope remained for Darragh. As the winner of the 100 fly, he could swim on the Canadian 4x100 medley relay. Canada would have to have one of the best 16 times in the world, though, and it was ranked 13th, with many countries still to hold trials. Darragh checked a week later, discovering that two teams had beaten Canada's time, one of them by 1/100th of a second. As the deadline approached, Canada was still holding on. It had been almost two nervewracking months since trials. Darragh was competing at the Grand Prix of Indianapolis when he finally got word from a Swim Canada official that the relay team had qualified. "It was really crazy," Darragh said. "I always had the expectation that I was going to make it, but until it's official you can't really celebrate." Darragh and Jason Block, who missed the qualifying mark by 2/100th of a second in the breaststroke, were added to the Canadian team. "My heart skipped a beat," Darragh said when he heard the news. · · · Having graduated from the University of Missouri, where he holds school records in the 200m butterfly and 200m individual medley, Darragh said the ability to concentrate solely on swimming was a huge benefit in preparation for trials. "To not be stressing about anything else -- sleep, homework," he said, "just being able to focus on one thing instead of on a whole bunch of different things was a huge help." So is his Olympic basketball dream is over? "I try to come back to it, but it's never the same," he says with a laugh. "Once you become a swimmer, you lose all co-ordination."