Hawthorn headed for Tokyo Olympics

Bracebridge is going to the Olympics.

On Saturday, Bracebridge’s Natalia Hawthorn found out that she has been officially selected to be a part of the women’s 1500 M track team headed for the Tokyo Olympics.

“They made the announcement at 7 a.m. my time, so by the time I got up at 7:30 I had all kinds of messages from friends, family and teammates. It was a pretty great way to wake up,” says Hawthorn from her current home in north Vancouver. “I’m thrilled. With covid and everything that’s gone on in the last year I’m just super grateful to be able to race.”

The 26-year-old was a track and field prodigy during her days at Bracebridge and Muskoka Lakes Secondary School, in addition to being an elite level cross-country skier. After graduation she pursued her athletic and academic career at the University of British Columbia.

“After I graduated from university reality really hit me. I needed to start supporting myself and I started working full time,” says Hawthorn. “I realized that really wasn’t my dream job so around 2019 I decided to just focus primarily on my training and take a part-time job.”

Overcoming injuries, picking up a sponsorship from Brooks Running and learning to love running just for the pure joy of the sport helped to spark Hawthorn to new competitive heights, just as the pandemic was shutting down athletics around the globe. With the 2020 Olympics postponed until this year, a window of opportunity opened for Hawthorn to join the team headed for Tokyo.

“The delay was really a blessing in disguise,” says Hawthorn. “Everything just seemed to fall into place. I had all of the supports I needed and the sponsorship with Brooks allowed me to focus on training and competing.”

Hawthorn also received a lot of support from her fiance, Coleman Allen, who she met at UBC and was himself a Team Canada athlete in swimming.

Over the past 12 months she continued to break personal-best records and get closer to her goal of qualifying for the Olympics. With the typical Olympic qualification meets cancelled or modified, a new qualification system was put in place for 2021.

Hawthorn competed in several events south of the border and was eventually able to hit the Olympic qualification standard of 4:04:20. In fact, she hit the qualifying time exactly – down to the tenth of a second.

“They said it’s just like baseball – a tie goes to the runner,” says Hawthorn.

Nonetheless she had to sit through a month’s worth of races to see if anyone else could break her qualifying time. On Saturday morning she got the good news that she had made it through. She now has one more race planned before heading out on July 18 for a training camp with the national team in Japan. She is scheduled to race on August 2.

This year the Olympics in Tokyo are not allowing spectators from other countries to attend so unfortunately there will be no cheering section from Bracebridge attending her races. Nonetheless, Hawthorn says she has been feeling the love from Muskoka.

“I want to thank everyone from Bracebridge for all the support. I’ve had so many messages of encouragement from high school friends and teachers,” she says.

Hawthorn says she can distinctly remember telling her coach in Grade 6 that she wanted to race in the Olympics, but along the way it’s really become more about pushing herself as far as she can go.

“ I’m going to just run the best race I can,” she says. “Anything’s possible when you step up to that starting line.”