What are the odds of not one, but two Olympians coming from the same grad class of a small town Saskatchewan school? One was a medalist in the winter Olympics, another competed in London.
Pretty good if you're talking about the Yorkton Regional High School class of 1993, it turns out. That was my grad class.
Indeed, I knew both of them. One was my best friend in junior high. The other I didn't know as well, but we definitely knew each other.
Jason Parker was an Olympic silver medalist in team pursuit speed skating at the 2006 Winter Games in Turino. He would have been around 30 at the time, maybe 31.
Jason's website says he put on his first skates at the age of one. I didn't know they made skates that small, but that's what he says, and he has the silver medal to back it up.
Cory Neifer, on the other hand, didn't get such an early start. Cory was the aforementioned friend from younger days. In Grades 8 and 9 we were best of friends, but we grew apart in high school.
He first picked up a rifle when he joined army cadets at the age of 12. I joined air cadets at the same time. He preferred the army cadets because they had range practice twice a week, whereas the air cadets shot only once a week. Soon he was going to summer camps focused on marksmanship.
Those camps, and countless hours of training since then, have paid off. He narrowly missed qualifying for the Canadian shooting team at the Beijing Olympics, so he went as a coach instead.
This time, however, Cory made to the team in two events, 10 metre air rifle and 50 metre prone rifle. He actually was the first person to qualify for team Canada, not just for shooting, but for all sports. He was one of only two shooters Canada sent.
At 36, Cory's likely one of the oldest athletes on Team Canada. The wonderful thing about shooting is that you can do it literally for decades and still be competitive.
In London, he had a tough go. Apparently he had equipment problems during the air rifle event July 30, leading to a 46th place finish out of 47. In prone rifle Aug. 3, Cory shot 589, placing him 38th out of 50. The difference in the qualification round between the first place shooter, who eventually won gold, and the 50th place shooter, was just 20 points, from 600 down to 580.
Cory didn't medal, but that's okay. If he decides to give it another go, he could still have a "shot" at the Rio games.
I'm not sure how the same school, the same class of about 300, could produce two Olympians. From what I remember, Jason's and Cory's upbringings were dissimilar. Cory definitely did not have an easy go of it. Both appear to have been successful later in life, however. Cory has a masters degree in human movement studies, for instance, a good education for an Olympian.
In order to keep his resting heartbeat down at a level so low that most people would be rushed to the hospital, he does more physical training than you can possibly imagine. I ran into him about 15 year ago and he told me he had his resting heartbeat down to 42 beats per minute, allowing him nearly 1.5 seconds between heartbeats to shoot. He was training around seven hours a day, at that point. That's dedication.
Cory Niefer and Jason Parker have proven you don't have to be rich, or trained in a special Chinese sporting school, or from some fancy place to make it to the most elite level of sporting in the world. They came from relatively humble beginnings, from little ol' Yorkton.
What you do need is dedication. Both had it in spades, and carried through right into their 30s. That's not an easy task.
Congratulations Cory on making it to London, and hopefully we'll see you in Rio.
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
