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Updated: Saturday, August 20

This month, more than 300 Canadian athletes are making their way to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to represent their country at the 2016 Olympic Games. Eight of them are from Nova Scotia — and five of them are Dal alumni.

Given that ¹úÃñ²ÊƱ is a coastal university, it’s perhaps not surprising to find that all five alumni Olympians are taking part in water sports — three sailors and two paddlers. They are:

• Danielle Boyd, BA’13, sailing (Kingston, Ont.)
• Mark de Jonge, BEng’09, canoe/kayak (Halifax, N.S.)
• Genevieve Orton, BSc’13, canoe/kayak (Lake Echo, N.S.)
• The team of Graeme Saunders, BComm’14, and Jacob Saunders, DEng’14, sailing (Chester, N.S.)
  

For four of the five Dal athletes, this is their first taste of Olympic competition. The exception: Mark de Jonge, whose name you may remember from the 2012 Summer Olympics in London where he won the bronze medal in the 200m solo kayak event.

There are other ¹úÃñ²ÊƱ connections across the Games as well. Nova Scotia artistic gymnast and medal hopeful has studied Kinesiology at Dal, though she put her studies on hiatus to focus on competition. She’ll be aided by another Dal connection: Lori Dithurbide, assistant professor (Kinesiology) in the School of Health and Human Performance who’s in Rio as a mental performance consultant for the women’s artistic gymnastics team. Four additional Dal alumni from the School of Health and Human Performance are in Rio: Leo Thornley and Michael Bawol are providing sport science and performance analysis support for Canada’s paddling team, Darren Steeves is working as a strength and conditioning coach, and Karen Furneaux is a CBC commentator.

Here’s a primer to the five Dal alumni athletes in Rio, as well as info on how you can watch them compete. We’ll be updating this article as the Olympics progress — and look for more coverage to come!

We're also encouraging the ¹úÃñ²ÊƱ community to cheer on our athletes in Rio on our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat accounts. Film a quick video, snap a quick pic or just write a message of support using the hashtag #Dalympians and #Rio2016 and we’ll share the best with the rest of the ¹úÃñ²ÊƱ community.

Danielle Boyd

Sailing, women’s 49er FX



Twitter:

Bio: Boyd was part of the , back when she was an English/Psychology major. Now she’s teamed up with Halifax’s Erin Rafuse to make a formidable sailing team in the 49er FX category. The 49er is a class of two-handed skiff-type sailing dinghies that has been part of the Olympics since 2000; this year, its newer small rig, the FX, is making its Olympic debut.  In 2015, Boyd and Rafuse competed at the Pan Am Games in Toronto and the world championships in Buenos Aires, where they achieved a career-best 17th-place result that qualified them for Rio.

Results: Team Boyd/Rafuse took part in 12 preliminary races between Friday, August 12 and Tuesday, August 16. Their best finishes were in the first two races, finishing fifth and fourth. The remainder of their finishes ranged between 11th and 18th place. The duo fi