Growing up, Noemie Thomas studied ballet. She loved the combination of grace and strength.
Dance fed her artistic appetite but left Thomass competitive spirit feeling hungry. That's one of the reasons she decided to exchange her ballet slippers for a swimsuit and goggles.
"I like to see the rewards of the hard work," said the 17-year-old who swims for the UBC Dolphins Swim Club and attends SpArts, the sports program at Magee secondary.
"What you put in is what you get out of it, she said of swimming and the timed precision that determines a winner. It's very black and white. What I didn't like about ballet, you got judged all the time. It's not evident who is better or not. It's just the judge's opinion. This is very clear."
Thomas gave up her dreams of dancing with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet but will perform on an international stage this weekend when she competes at the FINA World Swimming Championships in Barcelona, Spain. It's her first senior, long-course international competition and a step on the road to the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
At five-foot-four and 130 pounds, Thomas isn't an intimidating figure. But what she lacks in size she compensates with potential.
"She's got a pretty big upside," said Tom Johnson, the Dolphins' head coach. "It's early days."
Like a rough diamond, Thomas still needs polishing. Johnson explains she is still learning the difference between "a performance and becoming a performer."
Thomas's best events are the 50 and 100 metre butterfly. To race these distances, a swimmer must move through the preliminary heats, to the semifinals and then the final. Like a young dancer learning an arabesque, Thomas is still trying to master going fast enough to advance but saving something in the tank for the final.
"Part of it is really learning how to manage yourself in the high-end arena," Johnson said in a telephone interview from the Canadian team's staging camp in Torremolinos, Spain.
"In the early days of her career she would always swim pretty fast in the preliminaries but never really be able to lift another notch in the final. We have been working on that throughout the year. I'm trying to teach her to understand to play the whole event as opposed to just a single minute of the event."
Thomas has proven herself in short-course events, which are held in 25-metre pools unlike the 50-metre Olympic distance. She holds the Canadian short-course record in both the 50m and 100m fly. To win an Olympic or world championship medal, she must make the transition to the longer pool.
"You kind of need to have a more detailed strategy as to where you want to put your effort in," Thomas said. "You don't have the breaks with the walls where you can get extra push and extra power. You have to swim those extra metres."
It was Thomas's small stature that persuaded her parents to enroll her in swim lessons when she was young.
"I couldn't touch the bottom of the local pool," Thomas said with a laugh. "My parents said: 'She's not that tall. She needs to learn to swim.'"
Johnson said competitors quickly learn not to overlook Thomas.
"She swims big in the water," he said. "She is only taking 20 strokes on the first length and 23 strokes on the second length.
"People who are five or six inches taller than she is are doing the same number of strokes. The length of her stroke is pretty good for someone of her stature."
The world championships open Sunday with Thomas swimming the 100m butterfly. It's a tough test but one Johnson is confident Thomas can pass.
"She has never been in a meet like this," Johnson said. "She is a pretty quick study. She is swimming very well right now, very consistently.
"It's her first shot at it. It will be fun."
Thomas accepts she is a long shot to win a medal in Barcelona. Her goals are more modest.
"Enjoying the experience, being proud of the all the work I've done," she said. "Not being intimidated by all the big names out there. That's what I'm really trying to work toward."
Jim Morris is a veteran reporter who has covered sports for 30 years. Reach him at [email protected].
