Big Ben Tardioli races to a national canoe-kayak team

 

This is the year of achievement for Ben Tardioli.

Whether on the water or in the classroom, the 24-year-old Ottawa resident has hit new heights as an athlete and a student in the past three months. And the best is about to come.

Five days after finishing his prolonged six-year journey through Carleton University to earn his bachelor degree in civil engineering, a worry-free Tardioli started the qualification process to make his first Canadian team to the world senior canoe-kayak flatwater championships, Aug. 6-10 in Moscow.

At the opening national team trials in April in Georgia, the fourth-ranked Tardioli and 2012 Olympian Jason McCoombs of Dartmouth, N.S., staged an epic battle in the two-part men’s C1 200-metre sprint final. McCoombs won the first final, but Tardioli captured the second by two-100ths of a second to force a tiebreaker the next day.

At high noon, Tardioli scored a one-second victory and was one step away from a berth on his first world senior championship team. Needing a victory in the second team trial to secure that spot, Tardioli gave an ...more