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TORONTO, Canada, Mrch 27, 2021 - The decision of
whether or not Sam Schachter and Sam Pedlow
would travel to Doha, Qatar, two weeks ago for
the season-opening four-star event was not as
black and white as it might initially seem.
They’re dancing a high-wire act, The Sams. On
the one hand, prior to the event, the Canadians
were the No. 15 ranked team in the Olympic race,
holding tight onto the final qualification spot
for Tokyo. A seventeenth-place finish or better
from Swiss Mirco Gerson and Adrian Heidrich in
Doha would knock them down, one spot out of the
coveted top-15.
On the other hand, if they left Canada,
Schachter and Pedlow wouldn’t be able to come
home.
Traveling, even as the COVID-19 pandemic is
slowing, remains no easy feat. Tests must be
taken, exceptional entry permits distributed,
bubbles erected. For Canada, and particularly
for those living in Toronto, as Schachter and
Pedlow are, it is nearly impossible.
“We’re the most locked-down city in the world
still,” Pedlow said of Toronto, home of the
Canadian training centre.
They’ve still been able to train, just as the
Toronto Maple Leafs (hockey) and Toronto Raptors
(basketball) have been able to, but to leave the
country and return is a quarantine,
hassle-filled ordeal.
“If we travel to California [to train], then the
tournament gets cancelled, we’d have to
quarantine for two weeks, so we’ve been kind of
trying to play this game to figure out what
makes the most sense so we’re not going to be
quarantining for four weeks, six weeks, eight
weeks over the course of the year,” Pedlow said.
“That’s why we skipped Doha because we didn’t
know what was coming up after it.”
Now they know. After Doha is a three-week bubble
in Cancun, Mexico, featuring back-to-back-to
back four-stars, more than enough time for
Pedlow and Schachter to surpass the Swiss for
that fifteenth spot. But then it gets tricky
again, because this is 2021, and of course it
does.
Canada currently doesn’t even offer flights to
Mexico or the Caribbean, or any “sun
destination,” as Pedlow called it. Just to get
to Cancun requires Pedlow and Schachter to make
a week-long pit stop in Florida, to train with
coach LT Treumann and a talented crop of young
Americans. Getting back to Canada from Cancun
would require another stop in the United States,
a mandatory – and costly – hotel quarantine in
Canada, and then another wild route to Sochi for
the ensuing event.
“So,” Pedlow said, “we can’t come home.”
Prior to Sochi, they might make another stop in
Florida, or perhaps arrive in Europe a few weeks
early.
“But once we leave Canada,” Pedlow said,
“there’s no way to come home until after the
Olympics.”
Such is the unique plight of the Canadian
Olympic aspirants. But the good news is this:
there are enough events to play prior to the
Games that Schachter and Pedlow, a new father,
won’t be terribly hindered. There is Cancun,
followed by Sochi, which is immediately
succeeded by Ostrava. Five events in a period of
less than two months.
Five events to get the monkey of ninth-place
finishes off their backs.
A major reason Pedlow and Schachter, a 2016
Olympian, are so high in this Olympic race is
because of their consistency. That same reason
is, paradoxically, also why it’s so tough for
them to move up. Some teams, like the Swiss, for
example, or Americans Phil Dalhausser and Nick
Lucena, are top-heavy in their finishes. With
the majority of their points coming from a few
big results, they’re able to easily drop, say, a
25th or a 17th. This is not the case for Pedlow
and Schachter.
They’ve played 15 FIVB events -- and one NORCECA
-- in this Olympic qualification period, and
eight of them have been ninths.
“We are the kings of finishing top-nine,” Pedlow
said, laughing. “Over the course of our
partnership, I think we’ve come in ninth in over
75 percent of the tournaments we’ve played.
Consistency is what’s kept us in the race.
“We’re right there and we’ve been incredibly
consistent with our finishes,” Pedlow said.
“We’ve had the one fourth at a four-star [in
Yangzhou, China] but the rest have been
consistently ninth-place finishes so we need a
big event. We’re really hoping for one of those
breakout performances so that’s why we’ve taken
some extra time to prepare at home. We’re going
to push super aggressively to try and get in
that top fifteen.” |
