From second alternate to second ever podium finisher.
Finlay Knox has a knack for knocking down expectations as one of three Canadians to swim to an individual bronze medal last week at the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
“It’s very nice being at these Games with all the excitement around it, all the media being there and everyone else on Team Canada supporting you instead of just swimming,” said Knox, a Grade 12 student at Foothills Composite. “It was great to be able to be part of that small team and going through this bigger experience with just those four people and trying to get ahead of the competition as much as we could.
“It was an honour just to be there.”
On the second day of swimming the 6-foot-3, Knox got his best opportunity to medal in his signature event, the 200m IM.
He finished with a personal best 2:01.91, making up a ton of ground in the second half of the race in the breaststroke and freestyle to touch the wall third for Canada’s first swimming medal of the Games.
“I wasn’t going in there with a goal set time, but I knew that if I do go hard, my best time would place me third,” he said. “I didn’t let that get to me and swam fast and knew I possibly could get a relatively fast time for this time of the season.”
Knox, a longtime member of the Okotoks Mavericks swim club – formerly known as the Foothills Stingrays - tried not to let the Olympic sized magnitude get to him.
“It was very well put together, a lot of fun,” he said. “The games going on within the village, the building you’re sleeping in with the other athletes from other countries and just being around that atmosphere was a lot different than what we’re used to.
“For me, going into any competition, no matter how big it is I just want to focus on myself and how well I swim and not really put a name to how fast I should be swimming … We still had one job to do and that was to swim fast.”
Knox was able to better his personal best in the 200m IM, achieved in August in Fiji at the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships.
“I was very happy with his race and he got a best time which is really hard to duplicate,” said Todd Melton, Knox’s head coach with the Mavericks. “The hard part about that is Finlay didn’t get any time off.
“He only took about a week off. Finlay, his success really lies with his dedication.”
Melton said his goal was to get Knox into a position to replicate his performance in the South Pacific. The 17-year-old, of course, exceeded those expectations.
Expectations didn’t really come into play in terms of placement, Melton noted he and Knox work on performance planning rather than result-oriented finishes.
“Especially with placing and medalling you can’t really predict how other swimmers are going to perform,” Knox said. “If you go into a competition with a goal time that would put you high in the ranks that would help the prediction.
“For me, I don’t like goal planning because it just gets in my head. I just like going in there, swimming hard and having fun and that seems to be where my best results come from.”
The Youth Olympic journey also served as a galvanizing moment for the swim club.
Knox was presented a Canadian flag with the signatures of all of his Mavericks teammates, which he brought down to South America.
“This experience is bringing the club together,” Melton added. “It’s showing the younger kids that if Fin can do it so can I.”
