Paging Dr. Bagshaw, Olympian
July 08, 2024
After 16 years and five Olympic trials, UVic grad Jeremy Bagshaw has punched his ticket to the Paris Games. On his journey to the Olympics, he found his calling and earned a medical degree.
This time was different. In Ireland, he had reignited his joy of swimming, the pure love he felt at age five when he started in the sport, plunging into pools or the Pacific Ocean. This time was different. Before the race, he thought: enjoy yourself. After more than 20 years of racing, it could be his last competitive swim meet, ever. When he touched the wall, he was overwhelmed with relief.
This time was different. Because after 16 years and four previous attempts, UVic alumnus Jeremy Bagshaw, MSc ’19, had made the Canadian Olympic team—by four 100ths of a second. His parents were overseas visiting family in Singapore, but had stayed up until the early hours of the morning to watch the Olympic trials in Toronto—one last time. CBC sports broadcaster Devin Heroux exclaimed: “Dr. Bagshaw will be on the team, the way it’s looking right now!”
Bagshaw had accomplished something he’d dreamed of since childhood. He had qualified for the Olympics. And, astoundingly, he had trained for this feat while earning a medical degree at the University of Limerick in Ireland.
"My biggest thought was 'I really want to enjoy myself' especially because this could potentially have been my last race. The last thing on my mind was just thinking of me being a kid again and why I got into the sport. Enjoy it and race the other people around me as opposed to getting too caught up in the moment."
And now, instead of wrapping up his swim career, he’s en route to Paris, where he’ll race the 200m relay for Team Canada. He recalls the moment in Toronto that he touched the wall.
"A huge sense of relief. I think relief came first and then the excitement, just knowing the amount of heartbreak I've had in the past at Olympic trials, and that this time it kind of fell in my favour was more of a big sense of relief. Once that relief set in, then I got really excited about going to Paris this summer.”
Swimming is a sport where splinters of time count. In 2016, Bagshaw missed a spot on the Olympic team by 0.23 seconds. "This time I made it by four 100ths of a second,” he says.
The key was enjoying the race.
"I think that's what got the better of me in all those other moments. Not enjoying it as much as I should have, just really focusing on the outcome. Not really enjoying the sport for what it is. It’s a sport for fun. It's not really as serious as I made it out to be in the previous times I've tried.”
‘Exercise as medicine’
Bagshaw was born in Singapore, then lived in Indonesia as a small child before his family moved to Victoria. He attended St. Michael’s University School and trained with Island Swimming, alongside UVic alumnus and Olympian Ryan Cochrane. Bagshaw went on to be an NCAA star at the University of California-Berkeley, swimming for the California Golden Bears with great success. In 2014, he was named team captain, and the Bears won the NCAA championship. Bagshaw competed in the PanAm Games and medaled in the Commonwealth Games. But the Olympics, the exalted contest held just once every four years, remained out of reach.
After earning his undergrad, Bagshaw returned to Victoria to train with his club at Saanich Commonwealth Place and pursue a Master’s of Science in Kinesiology at UVic. He found he preferred to go to school and swim at the same time—each fed the other. His UVic studies afforded in-depth knowledge of the mechanics behind his training.
"Having the knowledge of why I'm doing things made it easier to wrap my head around and trust my training. I understood and knew what was happening physiologically based on the different training sessions I was doing and how that was going to help me on race day.”
But as importantly, his studies at UVic illuminated the concept of “exercise as medicine,” which piqued his interest in preventive medicine. He now aims to become a family doctor.
His original idea was to wind down his swim career in 2020. The pandemic bungled some plans—he fell ill and didn’t swim for a number of weeks. And when it came time to retire, he felt he had more to give. There were improvements he could make in technique or approach. He was not done yet. He had already committed to medical school in Ireland—but fortunately, the University of Limerick happened to have one of the country’s few 50-metre pools.
He alternated his time between hospital rotations and training at the pool. His coaches understood he was building a life after swimming—and he was able to move training times to suit his hospital work. Every time a new hospital rotation was scheduled, he and his coaches would plot out his workouts around them.
Bagshaw, now 32, drew inspiration from training with younger athletes in Limerick and their enthusiasm for the sport. The camaraderie kept him showing up at the pool day after day, sometimes for 4:30 a.m. starts.
“It's nice for me being an older swimmer. I was swimming with kids who were in undergrad or in high school still. So, it was a different perspective for me getting to swim with young kids again, seeing their love for the sport and how much they enjoy swimming. That really rubbed off on me, bringing that joy I had when I was a lot younger before I became a true 'professional swimmer.'”
This time, if he missed the Olympics, he had other life plans—which took some pressure off. Bagshaw now has no shortage of plans. In June, he flew to join other Team Canada swimmers in Rome, then Barcelona, then to Paris to fulfill his dream of competing in the Games. Right after the spectacle of the closing ceremonies, he will take a train to London, England, where he’ll start an internship at a local hospital.
He ultimately hopes to return to BC to practise family medicine. He shadowed some physicians in high school and was drawn to the idea of forging long relationships with patients, of making a difference in their lives. But first, there is Paris to be enjoyed. Bagshaw was also recently named one of the team captains for the Canadian Olympic swim team.
Enjoying the day-to-day
When Dr. Bagshaw takes a break, he goes out for dinner with friends. He speaks three languages and enjoys international cuisine. He’s always on the hunt for an elite pizza, wherever he is.
As an older Olympic rookie, he treasures the people he has connected with and competed against over the years. Those relationships have kept him chasing his chlorine dreams, allowing him to outlast those years of near misses and heartbreak.
"I put a lot less pressure on myself to perform and focus more on enjoying the day-to-day and the process of it. When I was younger, all I really cared about was the eventual outcome of the whatever race, whether it was the best time or a certain podium position or finish in a race.”
Still, he’s always had the mentality of wanting to be the best he can be—a mindset that has led him to Paris. "I'm excited just to walk around the Athletes’ Village and see all the athletes from other countries who are kind of at the top of their game, seeing what they're doing,” he reflects.
“It’s bittersweet” 🥹
— CBC Olympics (@CBCOlympics) May 16, 2024
The ultimate journey: 17 years after his first Olympic trials, Jeremy Bagshaw may FINALLY BE GOING TO THE OLYMPICS 👏https://t.co/y3N42GLsct pic.twitter.com/SXxxjxmCYj
"If you have a dream, don't give up on it," he commented to Devin Heroux of CBC news in an interview just after the trials. “I’ve always wanted to go the Olympics. That’s the one thing I’ve always wanted to do since I was maybe five years old—and I finally did it.”
— Jenny Manzer, BA '97
Top photo courtesy of Swimming Canada/Ian MacNicol