Competing virtually for the past year and a half, Nathan Shuh is very much looking forward to in-person meets, perhaps at the trampoline gymnastics world championships in November. For that, he’ll have to travel to Baku, Azerbaijan.
Assisting the Elmira native with preparations and travel costs will be a $10,000 FACE (Fuelling Athlete and Coaching Excellence) grant from Petro-Canada, as Shuh was one of 55 up-and-coming athletes and their coaches selected this year to receive support.
The National Sport Federations nominate candidates across Canada who would benefit the most from a grant. Then, a committee made up of representatives from PetroCanada, the Canadian Olympic Committee, the Canadian Paralympic Committee and the Coaching Association of Canada choose the recipients.
“Nathan has been on the National Gymnastics team for the last two years and is one of the top male athletes in Canada. In the 2020 V-tramp international Virtual competition he placed first. Nathan is targeted to participate in the 2021 Pan Am Championships and 2021 World Cup (which are both Olympic qualifying events). We are very excited to have Nathan as part of the 2021 class of FACE recipients,” said Gymnastics Canada in nominating Shuh for the award.
“When we began our partnership with the Canadian Olympic Committee and Canadian Paralympic Committee we quickly recognized that there was a gap in funding for non-carded aspiring Olympians and Paralympians. With the creation of the FACE program we set out help to address this gap. As coaches play a crucial role in the success of our athletes we also wanted the program that could aid in their journey with the athlete as well,” said Petro-Canada marketing communications director Kristina Schaefer in an email.
For Shuh, the $10,000 will help with his training and ability to enter competitions. Since the onset of the pandemic, most of the activities have been carried out online, which will be true of the Canadian national events later this month.
“For the virtual competitions we have, we set up a bunch of cameras and we use Zoom for them. They don’t actually score us live, but they just make sure that we’re following all the proper competition procedures, and then they’ll score the competitions once they receive the videos from all the competitors,” Shuh explained of the alternative arrangements made during the COVID-19 crisis.
By the fall, he expects there will be a return to conventional meets.
“If everything goes to plan, I think my next competition is going to be the world championships, and that will be in person.”
The Canadian contingent for Azerbaijan would be a maximum of four men and four women. The meets themselves draw about 70 to 100 competitors from around the world in each of the men’s and women’s divisions.
Already busy training, Shuh will have a heightened schedule in the lead-up to the world events, which adds to a busy schedule given his day job in a bank. It’s all part of the process for the recent University of Toronto economics graduate.
“Right now, we’re training about four times a week on the trampolines, and then, outside of that, we do conditioning, strength conditioning about minimum once every two days. We’re always doing little things every day,” he said of the training with his coach.
