Photo from Jacob Saunders' Facebook
A man from Chester has been selected to represent Canada in the summer Olympics.
Twenty-eight year old Jacob Saunders will compete alongside his partner, Oliver Bone in the two person men’s 470 sailing completion at the upcoming Olympics in Tokyo.
He says despite the disappointment of the competition being postponed last year, he is excited it will go ahead this summer.
“We qualified the country in the winter of 2020 and we were gearing up for Tokyo when the world kind of shut down and things got delayed, but we carried forward and kept pushing with the goal to compete again,” explained Saunders.
Although he does have concerns about traveling to another country during a pandemic, he said he is confident in the safety precautions the International Olympic committee and the Japanese government will have place
Competing in the Olympics is not a first for Saunders who made his Olympic debut with his brother in 2016 in Rio where the pair came in 22nd place.
Saunders said he couldn’t have done this without the tremendous support received from the community over the years.
“Sailings obviously an expensive sport, and once I started travelling internationally and racing, the village really stepped up and I got some help to go to my first world championship when I was 15.”
The summer Olympics runs from July 23rd to August 8th.
