Home > Personalities

She just missed the Olympics … but she’s hardly sitting around moping after a big finish at Challenge Cap-Quebec

Canadian Dominika Jamnicky says she's still focussed on making the Olympics

Photo by: Kevin Mackinnon

It was a tough spring for Canada’s Dominika Jamnicky, who made a gallant effort to qualify for the Olympics in Paris, but came up just short after a busy spring spent flying around the world.

“It’s been a bit of a tough road, missing out on qualifying for the Olympics by just one spot,” Jamnicky said in an interview just before Challenge Cap-Quebec on Sunday. “So, I thought, what better way to distract myself from that by jumping into this race in the heart of Quebec.”

Jamnicky’s spring involved competing on five different continents over a seven-week period.

“We always knew it was an outside shot, and it was going to to be close,” she said of the Olympic qualifying process. “So I basically had to put myself in a position where I was toeing the line in every last qualification race. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but we gave it our best shot. We came up so close to making it. It was 170 points between me and the last girl to get on the line.”

Leap of faith

After serving as an alternate for the Canadian team at the Games in Tokyo three years ago, Jamnicky’s run for the Olympics came during a busy time in her life.

“No one is going to guarantee that you are going to make it,” she said. “It’s a leap of faith that you take in yourself. I trusted in myself. I believed I could do it after coming off four years of chiropractic school. I really tried to put myself in a position where I could do it, and we came so close. For me it just keeping that self belief and really going after your goals and dreams.”

Podium finish

It wasn’t Jamnicky’s first half-distance event, but the two-time Commonwealth Games participant proved that she has potential over the distance with her third-place finish at Challenge Cap-Quebec. (A week earlier she’d won the Americas Triathlon Cup in Magog, Quebec.) Despite riding a road bike, Jamnicky managed to stay in contention, coming off the bike in fourth place, and ran her way to third.

Does that mean we’re likely to see Jamnicky competing in longer distance races from here on in? Probably not – she remains committed to go after the Olympics.

“I still feel like I have so much more to give in short course,” she said. “With just narrowly missing out on Paris, I think Los Angeles (the site of the Games in 2028) is a goal of mine and something that I really want to go after.”