Placing 14th all-around at the Pan American Games in Toronto was as good as gold for St. Albert gymnast Marisa Dick. “I was really happy.
Placing 14th all-around at the Pan American Games in Toronto was as good as gold for St. Albert gymnast Marisa Dick.
“I was really happy. I did better than I thought I would,” said Dick, the only female gymnast competing for Trinidad and Tobago.
The Grade 12 Paul Kane High School student placed 20th on qualification day before achieving the highest all-around ranking ever by a Trinidad gymnast.
“To place higher than I did on qualification day is really good,” said the Ortona Gymnastics Club performer.
The result bodes well for Dick at worlds, Oct. 23 to Nov. 1 in Glasgow, Scotland. After tearing an Achilles tendon halfway through her last event, the floor routine, at the Senior Pan American Gymnastics Championships last August in Toronto, she still finished 29th all-around.
“It really boosts my confidence, just knowing that I did come back better than I was before I got injured, and this competition went really well,” said Dick, who returned to action in April at provincials in Lethbridge in the national open category and last month participated at the Trinidad nationals.
The final rankings for Dick at the Pan Am Games were 19th on beam, 24th on bars, 33rd on floor and 36th on vault.
“My bar, vault and floor were all really good,” she said. “It was my first time doing vault again on a hard surface since my injury. Floor was fun and I did it cleanly. It was just a good routine. Bars was a good routine too.
“Everything went pretty well except for this one skill, my front aerial. I just wish it went better on beam because my hope was to make beam finals but my routines just weren't as clean as they would've needed to be.”
It was a major thrill for Dick to experience the Pan Am Games, featuring athletes from the nations in the Americas competing in summer sports.
“There was so much hype around it and just being in the village with other people from different sports from all over the world and talking to them about their sports was super cool.”
Dick, 18, has dual Canadian/Trinidad citizenship but is ineligible to compete in the elite category in Canada because of her international commitment with the Caribbean country.
“It's kind of funny because I don't have the Trinidad accent and with the other athletes from Trinidad you could definitely tell I didn't fit in,” she said. “People were asking me how the weather is here compared to Trinidad and what it's like to be so far away from home and then I told them where I lived.”
Another highlight was the opening ceremonies.
“That was super cool. Rogers Centre was packed. The seats were filled all the way up to the ceiling,” she said. “It's just crazy that there is so much support around the Games.”
Dick's journey to the Rio 2016 Olympics will continue at worlds, where she has to place ahead of two other Trinidad gymnasts and finish among the top 100 all-around finishers in the selection process.
“I want to make all-around finals and then a few (event) finals would be nice too,” said Dick, who made her world debut in 2013 at Antwerp, Belgium, and placed 50th out of 81 competitors in the all-around event.
Dick is also the first Trinidad female gymnast to medal internationally. At the 2014 Commonwealth Invitational in Perth, Scotland, she tied for gold on bars and silver on beam and was awarded bronze for vault and in the all-around point totals at the Artistic Celtic Cup.
An illness prevented her from representing Trinidad at last year's Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
Dick is strengthening her skill set in preparation for worlds.
“Now that this competition is over, I've been working on new skills,” said the 2013 Alberta Gymnastics Federation female athlete of the year. “I'm also trying a new skill on beam that I want to try to get named after me.”
