Caeli McKay on ‘brand new ankle’ for World Cup teams up with Kate Miller in synchro

There is a chaotic, joyful, and frequent scene at many international sport events and diving is no exception.

Usually it will include an Olympian, standing near the entrance of a large aquatic complex, hair still damp. A flock of bubbling 10 year-olds, eyes wide, surround the older athlete towering like a lone elder tree in a forest of saplings.

Yesterday the currency was an autograph, today it’s a selfie.

It’s a scene like this in Gatineau at a FINA Diving Grand Prix that Kate Miller first met Caeli McKay. Miller, younger by just under six years, recently found the photo memory.

“I was like ‘Oh my gosh, she’s so cool. She’s going to international competitions’, says Miller, recalling her childhood excitement, “I was at a baby training camp.”

In sport, it’s amazing how quickly roles can change. On May 6, Miller, 17, and McKay, 23, will make their team debut by competing in the women’s 10m synchro event at the World Aquatics Diving World Cup in Montreal.

The competition runs May 5-7 at Parc Olympique.

It is Miller’s first major senior international competition. McKay hasn’t had a full-time synchro partner since her own mentor, three-time Olympic medallist Meaghan Benfeito, retired after Tokyo 2020.

McKay also met Benfeito as a much younger athlete, then lived with her for a period after moving from Calgary to Montreal as a 16 year-old.

The Calgarian’s international debut with Benfeito was also as a 17 year-old. They won silver at the Grand Prix in Rostock, Germany in 2017. The peak was a fourth-place finish in 10m synchro at Tokyo 2020, McKay operating on a badly injured left ankle from a dryland accident less than a month before the Olympic Games.

In fact, after enduring incredible pain by diving on the troubled joint for the entirety of the 2022 season, McKay opted for surgery in October 2022. Montreal’s World Cup will be her first competition since the operation.

“I’m really looking forward to finally getting back out there with a brand new ankle,” says McKay, “

Add up that experience and McKay, still a younger athlete herself, is filling the mentor role for Miller.

“I’m also trying to mentally prepare her for what to expect and how I felt and how certain events felt for me,” says McKay, “I’ve actually lived it.”

McKay has also watched Miller grow up. The younger diver is from Ottawa and would train in Montreal occasionally. McKay says the talent was evident, even calls her ‘fearless’. In 2021, at the start of her Grade 11 year, Miller overcame reservations about leaving her family and friends and moved from Ottawa to Toronto to advance her career. “It turned out to be a great decision for me because I went and I ended up making new friends, I ended up having great experiences, improving my diving,” says Miller, “I knew it was a step that I just had to take.”

In November of last year, Miller became a World Junior champion on 3m synchro.

She has also been to two FINA Diving Grand Prixs, a stepping stone event to the World Cup. Miller won a silver medal in the individual 10m two days after her 16th birthday in 2021.

With that limited international experience, a World Cup, with its elite invitees, will be a big step for the now 17 year-old.

Miller is approaching it with measured curiosity and a spirit of self-improvement, “My main focus is just doing the best I can, having the experience I need for the future.”

Montreal will also be a learning experience for McKay and Miller as a team. Diving Plongeon Canada has a set of criteria upon which the pair were matched. They have only been working together since late winter. Miller travels to Montreal for a week at a time and the two divers spend the majority of that time practising their timing.

Each diver has a ‘dive list’ and the strength of a team results from how closely these lists match. And, how skilled each athlete is at executing each dive. From there, “It’s more the take-off…the leaving the tower that really determines how good your synchro is gonna be,” says McKay, “There’s not much you change within the air to tie it up.”

From that foundation, McKay believes that understanding each other as athletes is crucial based on her previous experience with Benfeito. “We match up very, very well and very naturally, so there’s not that much to work on her,” says McKay.

Canada has 10 athletes competing in the World Cup, the middle stop in 2023 following Xi’an, China in April and the Berlin Super Final August 4-6.

To buy tickets for the event and for the complete schedule, visit our website : https://diving.ca/worldcup/.