Hatter wins four medals at Canada senior games

By JAMES TUBB on September 1, 2022.

jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb

Michelle David-Roll was focused on making the podium at least once while competing at the Canada 55+ Games. By the end, she made four appearances at the top.

The Medicine Hat product won four gold medals in swimming events at the 2022 Canada 55+ Games hosted in Kamloops from Aug. 24-26. She said it was a fun experience meeting and competing against people from all over Canada.

“It was really good and fun, the people at the opening ceremonies, the Yukon team, they were just crazy and were dancing all over the place,” David-Roll said. “It was just really fun.”

The 61-year-old won gold in the 50-metre freestyle, 100-metre freestyle, 100-metre backstroke and the 100-metre breaststroke. She competed against 62-year-olds as her birthday is in October.

David-Roll said she qualified for the Canada 55+ Games in June at a race in Peace River. When it came to the 55+ Games, she just wanted to go out and do her best.

“I felt ready, I had been training really hard since the qualifiers in June,” David-Roll said. “I really worked hard over the summer and really committed a lot of time to just swimming and to cross training because I had shoulder surgery a little over a year ago and I’ve had to really work hard at rehabbing that and trying to get it strong.”

Her go-to spots for training are the indoor and outdoor pools at the Big Marble Go Centre and biking a “fairly hard route” up the Tepee Hill, which she says can take anywhere from 42-48 minutes. On top of physiotherapy to get her shoulder back in action, she also worked out with weights and bands, stretching and TRX workouts, with days off being unusual for her.

David-Roll said swimming is something she’s loved to do since she was a child and says she feels free while floating in the water, but almost flips a switch in competitions.

“When I was a little girl, I swam with AMAC and I’ve just had swimming in my life since I was little. I just feel so free floating the water. It’s just a really beautiful feeling for me,” David-Roll said. “It is fun to talk to other people and stuff but once you get out there on the deck behind the blocks, and it’s your turn, now it’s business.”

She thanks the city of Kamloops for doing an “awesome job” at hosting the Games and said it is known as the tournament capital of Canada because of its first-class facilities.

David-Roll is Métis and was able to share a profound experience with a chief named Willie Littlechild in Kamloops that she won’t forget.

“He did an honorarium for all the residential children who never ever came home, so he did a little spiel and then he took two orange shirts, he put them on the starting blocks and then he swam,” David-Roll said. “There was probably about 10 other people who were asked to swim in that honorarium and so that was very cool that I got to do that. I felt really honoured that I was asked to participate in that swim.”

She doesn’t know when her next event will be but David-Roll said she plans on competing at the qualifiers next summer for the 2024 Canada 55+ Games.

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