uOttawa's 2024 Olympic Athletes

There will be a uOttawa first at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games; three Olympians from uOttawa will represent Canada together in one event. The trio consists of Toshka Besharah, Natalie Davison, and Courtney Stott and they are racing the women's Kayak Four.

They will be joined in Paris by canoe sprint racer Sophia Jensen and Eliezer Adjibi, a member of Canada's athletics team heading to Paris, making a total of five uOttawa students and alumni who will wear the red and white in Paris. All five are first-time Olympians.

Toshka Besharah is a current third-year Translational and Molecular Medicine student in the Faculty of Medicine, while Natalie Davison (Health Sciences, '15) and Courtney Stott (Health Sciences, '14) are both uOttawa alumni. The trio competed together at the 2023 World Championships, where they qualified for Paris, and at the 2023 Pan American Games, where they won the silver medal.

Davison, who studied Nursing and calls Manotick home, first competed at the World Championships at the senior level in 2017 while Besharah, from Ottawa, made her senior World Championship debut in 2022. The pair train together in Ottawa at the Rideau Canoe Club. Stott, originally from Pickering, Ont., studied Human Kinetics and now trains out of Toronto at The Balmy Beach Canoe Club. 

Tune in to catch the 2024 Kayak Four heats on Tuesday, August 6. If Canada advances, the semifinals and final are set for Thursday, August 8.

Of note, the trio of kayak racers follow in the footsteps of uOttawa alumna Claudia Hunt, who was a member of Canada's first ever women's canoe-kayak Olympic team in 1968. Fellow uOttawa alumna, Brianna Hennessy (Health Sciences '08), has been named to Canada's Paralympic Canoe-Kayak team. A full breakdown of uOttawa's 2024 Paralympic Athletes will follow.

Sophia Jensen, a part-time Environmental Studies student in the Faculty of Arts, won a bronze medal at the 2023 Pan American Games in the women's Canoe Single 200m event. On the 2024 World Cup circuit, she earned a silver medal finish in the first race of the year, and at the 2023 World Championships she placed sixth. Her first senior world championship appearance was in 2021. Hailing from Chelsea, Que., Jensen trains at the Cascades Club.

In Paris, Jensen will line up for the start of the Canoe Single 200m heats on August 8, competing at the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium.

Eliezer Adjibi will be spending his first Olympic Games at the 80,000-seat Stade de France as a member of Canada's track and field team. Adjibi, of Ottawa, placed second in the men's 100 metre event at the 2024 Canadian Athletics Championships, in a photo finish with Olympic medallist Andre De Grasse. Previously, Adjibi set a Canada Summer Games record en route to a gold medal in 2022.

Training with C.A.N.I., an Ottawa-based club, Adjibi competed against Gee-Gees track and field team members at indoor events this winter, including the University of Ottawa Winter Classic. Adjibi is in consideration for the men's 4x100 metre relay team in Paris. The heats will be run on Thursday, August 8 with the final on Friday, August 9.