Olympic aspirations

By Ryan McCracken on April 13, 2018.

rmccracken@medicinehatnews.com @MHNMcCracken

Medicine Hat Bulldogs Track and Field Club athlete Madison Kane-Rissling is turning heads at an Olympic level.

The 18-year-old Hatter left her mark with athletic talent scouts at the RBC Training Ground combine at the Family Leisure Centre in March and has been selected to attend the regional final later this month in Calgary as one of Alberta’s top-100 athletes with Olympic potential.

“I’m really excited for this opportuinty and being able to just compete against all the other 100 amazing athletes,” said Kane-Rissling, who was the top female performer at the Medicine Hat qualifier last month. “We went to the Training Ground then a couple days later they sent out an email saying ‘thank-you’ and when they were going to release who all made it.But then I got a second email saying that since I was the top female performer in Medicine Hat I got an automatic invitation to attend the regional final.”

The invitation comes after Kane-Rissling took gold in the under-20 high jump, long jump, triple jump and 4×100-metre relay at the Alberta Indoor Games in February.

The Grade 12 Monsignor McCoy student went on to win high jump gold at the University of Alberta Universiade indoor track provincial championship in March.

Kane-Rissling will be tested in speed, power, strength and endurance benchmark tests at the regional final on April 21, and she’ll be doing it in front of officials from the Canadian Olympic Committee as well as scouts from 14 national sport organizations. The field will feature the top qualifiers from other RBCTraining Ground combines held in Red Deer, Medicine Hat, Cochrane,Grande Prairie and Edmonton.

The event will also feature Olympian mentors from Alberta including Pyeongchang gold medalists Justin Krips (bobsled) and Brady Leman (ski cross).

“It’s honestly astounding. I’m looking forward to learning and listening to them speak. It’s nice to go and listen to people who have already experienced things, especially when you’re so young and you’re going through the stages. It’s all nerve-wracking,” she said. “Just hearing them talk about their experience will really teach me a lot going forward with my track career.”

With graduation just around the corner, Kane-Rissling says she’s still figuring out a plan on where to take her budding track career, but if there’s one place she can say for certain that she wants to be, it’s the Olympic Summer Games.

“Right now I’m just trying to figure out a career path and where Iwant to go, and the Olympics is somewhere in the future for me, I believe,” she said.

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