Swimming | From reservist to captain Mary-Sophie

The last Olympic cycle was exceptionally short due to the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics. However, these three years were full of twists and turns for Mary-Sophie Harvey, elected by her peers as one of the four captains of the Canadian swimming team for the fortnight in Paris.

The role is quite a turnaround for the 24-year-old, who had not felt like a full member of the group in the Japanese capital. Selected as a relay runner after her fifth-place finish in the 200m freestyle at the Olympic Trials, she was told by coaches that her services would ultimately not be required in the preliminaries of the 4x200m relay, the only race she had prepared for.

Because every swimmer is required by regulation to compete in at least one event, Harvey had been assigned to the 100m backstroke in the mixed 4x100m relay heats, a new event in which Canada had no podium hopes. The sidelining hit her hard.

“Why did you take me if I’m not going to swim the relay I trained for?” she wondered at the time. I felt a little alone. My coach [Claude St-Jean] was not with me. So the others did not know what I was doing in training and what I could accomplish in competition.”

The left-behind had pleaded to be able to cover the four lengths in 1 min 57 s, something she had not managed at the Trials a month earlier. The day before the race, the coaches finally gave her the green light. “I was torn between tears and joy,” she recalls.

Third on the block, she did exactly what she had announced: 1 min 57.53, contributing to the fourth place for her country at this stage. “It kind of proved that I don’t talk through my hat when I say something!”

However, the next morning, she watched the final as a spectator, along with Katerine Savard, where her teammates finished just off the podium.

As “difficult and emotional” as the experience was, Harvey believes she would have given up swimming if she hadn’t had it.

My mother, my rock

Mary-Sophie Harvey, one of the most beautiful talents in the history of Quebec swimming, has come a long way despite her young age. After an eventful training trip to Turkey, where she injured both shoulders in 2017, she thought it was all over two years later. Not just in the water. She tried to end her life, an episode she recounted during the Tokyo Olympics.

“Depression, nine-month injury, eating disorders, suicide attempts, I’ve been through a lot,” lists the triple medalist at the 2015 Junior World Championships in an interview with The Press.

Through these storms, his mother, Stéphanie Matte, a former swimmer, was a real lifeline.

His mother rekindled the flame by pulling out a newspaper clipping. The New List from Trois-Rivières, the swimmer’s native region, where little Mary-Sophie, 10, proclaims in big letters: “I want to go to the Olympics.”

“Is it too early, at 10 years old, to talk about Mary-Sophie Harvey as an Olympic hopeful?” wrote Serge L’Heureux about the representative of the Mégophias, who was then dominating the national rankings in her age group.

Looking back on the article nine years later, she felt she could not betray the ideals of the little girl she had been.

More comfortable being in a swimsuit

The roller coaster ride didn’t stop after the last Olympics in Tokyo. At the World Championships the following summer, Harvey achieved the best individual finish of her career, reaching the final of the 200m individual medley in Budapest. She also won bronze in the 4x200m relay. Any ambition was possible for the CAMO representative.

However, during the party to celebrate the end of the competition in a bar, the Quebecer found herself unconscious in an alley. A substance was likely added to one of her drinks. She lost all memory of the events over a period of four to six hours. When she returned home, she discovered a dozen bruises on her body.

The trauma caught up with her at the start of the following season.

“I wasn’t excited to train, I wasn’t excited to compete. Everything was flat. Will I ever get the desire back? That’s what scared me.”

Her coach Greg Arkhurst supported her as best he could. “I’m a date-driven person,” Harvey says. “You can’t put a date on getting back to mental health. That’s what I found really hard. Greg said, ‘It’ll take as long as it takes.’ Once I accepted that, I was able to start healing.”

A podium is possible

At the World Championships last summer, Harvey took advantage of the withdrawals of her compatriots Summer McIntosh and Sydney Pickrem to line up in the 200 IM, where she had the potential to at least return to the final. She showed her colours in the heats by recording the third time, tied with the American Alexandra Walsh, one of the favorites.

An unusual event occurred during the first semi-final: the disqualification of three competitors, including the Australian Kaylee McKeown, the reigning vice-world champion. Harvey, who was starting in the next wave, was destabilized, not knowing the cause of the exclusions.

Harvey won’t have a chance to recover in Paris as McIntosh and Pickrem beat her again at the Trials in the 200 IM. Still “a little disappointed” three weeks later, she was more interested in remembering the best competition of her career, during which she won silver in her three other events.

She will need an extraordinary performance to hope to get close to a medal in the 200m freestyle, but a podium finish is possible in three of the four relays in which she is expected to line up.

With her seven medals at the Pan American Games last fall, captain Mary-Sophie Harvey showed that she is someone who can be counted on.