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| Olympian David Kikuchi graduated from ±«Óătv with a Bachelor of Science in 2001. (Contributed photo) |
For David Kikuchi, everything’s riding on Friday.
Nursing an injured elbow, the ±«Óătv grad says his berth on the Canadian men’s gymnastics squad heading to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing is contingent of whether he can complete his events at a pre-Olympic training camp in Calgary and prove to the national coaches that he’s good to go.
“The bones are out of place a little bit, just enough to be quite bothersome,” says Mr. Kikuchi, who was seeing Halifax osteopath Peter Goodman. “A week ago it was pretty sore, but this week in practice it felt pretty good.”
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A mainstay of the men’s national team, he represented Canada at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens and was a member of Canada's squad at the 2006 world championships. At the Canadian championships held in Calgary in June, he placed first in the rings—there’s a reason why he’s called “Lord of the Rings”—and second in pommel horse, parallel bars, horizontal bar and all around competition.
He says going to ±«Óătv to study mathematics and statistics just as he started training full-time benefits him now. He’s organized and works hard to keep balance in his life. As well as training for the Olympics, he works for RBC in Halifax (he’s one of 28 RBC Olympians) and is a provincial gymnastics coach. Since the age of seven, his own coach has been his father, Tak Kikuchi.
His says the team is business-like and focused with the Olympics just 22 days away.
“We’ve got a job to do,” says Mr. Kikuchi, who adds teams from China and Japan provide the toughest competition. “We know what it takes to get there and we know what it’s going to make it to the podium.”