Ellie Black happy to be home after challenging Tokyo Olympics

Black is Back: the Halifax gymnast reflects on the rollercoaster ride of preparing, then withdrawing before finally setting a best-ever Team Canada result at the Olympic Games

HALIFAXtoday \  Steve Gow

In her own words, the past few months have “been a wild ride” for Olympic athlete Ellie Black.

Returning from Tokyo on August 6 where the local gymnast narrowly missed the medal podium — placing fourth in the women’s balance beam — while competing with a sprained left ankle, Black’s rollercoaster ride started years before she had even arrived in Japan.

“The whole lead up to this Olympics didn’t look like normal. It’s been a very hard four years leading up to it and then that got extended an extra year,” says Black, noting the event was delayed a calendar year due to the pandemic. “(But) to be able to do that on my ankle that I injured and then have an amazing performance and come fourth at the Olympics … to do all that with the support back home — I’m just blown away by the support we’ve had.”

There is no disputing Black’s accomplishment was anything short of astonishing. Having sprained her ankle during training less than a month prior to the start of the Tokyo Olympics, the aggravation of reinjuring it at the event caused her to pull out of the all-around final in order to focus solely on the beam event.

While the fourth place finish may not have been the result the 25-year-old hoped for, the stunning performance on the beam earned Team Canada its best ever Olympic result in women’s artistic gymnastics.

“I’m actually exhausted,” admits Black. “It’s great to be home, it’s great to be back with my family and my friends and really just take some time to recover — rest my ankle, rest my body and my mind after this whole whirlwind.”

The Halifax native also admits that after such a tumultuous event, it is challenging to come back down to Earth.

“After the Olympic games, you’re at such a high and then you come back and it’s such a crash. You really do have to take that time to just be back in the community, able to go to a grocery store — I haven’t been to a grocery store since April,” laughs the three-time Olympian, adding that having the Games in Tokyo, in particular, presented a distinct challenge.

With the country under its fourth state of emergency after a surge of new cases of COVID-19, as well as seeing a record of new cases of the virus set days after the event began, athletes were confined to strict bubbles and quarantined from family and friends for weeks, yet Black and other Canadian athletes made the best of it.

“We didn’t have spectators, we didn’t have family and friends there cheering us on,” says Black. “So for us, it was making sure that we documented with photos what we were doing and being able to bring those back to Canadians and family and friends and share our Olympic experience.”

Posted through the RBC Training Ground Instagram page, those photos aimed to connect competitors to family and friends, as well as hopefully inspire young athletes by providing a sneak peek of the Tokyo Olympics from a unique perspective.

Black is an ambassador for the RBC Training Ground, a talent growth and funding program and that attempts to identify future athletes with Olympic potential. Launched in 2016, the program proudly boasts that it has helped eight Canadian athletes make their debut at the Tokyo Olympics.

“It’s really important for me to be a part of this because it’s that idea of inspiring the next generation and being able to give back to the community and showing that there is an opportunity where you don’t expect it,” says Black. This year’s crop of RBC Olympians included track cycling gold-medallist Kelsey Mitchell and rower Avalon Wasteneys, who also earned a gold medal with the women’s eight.

“That’s been incredible and so hopefully it inspires and shows that the program works,” adds Black. Aspiring Olympians aged 14 to 25 still have until August 15 to sign up for a virtual test to see if they qualify for the RBC Training Ground program.

As for Black, she is currently healing her ankle and decompressing after a challenging but rewarding few years.  She admits, for now, she is happy to take things day-by-day but she definitely isn’t taking the notion of a fourth Olympics appearance off the table.

“Right after you’re done competing — whether you’ve done great or it doesn’t go exactly as planned — you feel so motivated, you feel so inspired and you want to go home and work so hard and go for the next one,” admits Black. “So for me, I’m not ready to be done with gymnastics — I was already planning on continuing to train afterwards.”