By Jim Morris

A slow recovery from a shoulder injury has been a learning process for Cole Pratt.

Pratt hurt his left shoulder in November 2021 after attending his first Olympics in Tokyo. He didn’t get back into the water until late last fall.

While Pratt dealt with rehab, teammates like Joshua Liendo and Finlay Knox were establishing themselves on the international stage with performances at the 2022 FINA World Championships in Budapest and the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

“I used to think discipline and patience were a different thing,” said the 20-year-old who trains at Calgary’s Cascade Swim Club with coach Dave Johnson. “But once I starting thinking of it as a joint category, then it became a lot easier for me to be patient in what I was doing. To just follow the process and trust in the process.”

Pratt was 19^th in the 100-metre backstroke and 21^st in the 50 back at the 2023 Bell Canadian Swimming Trials. He came into the meet with no real expectations of qualifying for this summer’s World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan.

For him, the meet was just another step along the long road he hopes leads to the 2024 Paris Olympics.

“It’s been really long, it’s been really hard,” he said. “It’s been a really stressful last couple of years.

He recently competed on all three legs of the Mare Nostrum tour in Europe, finishing as high as 20^th in the 200-m back.

Johnson said the first challenge in the healing process was determining the extent of Pratt’s injury. Once it was diagnosed as a torn labrum, a conditioning and rehab schedule was developed.

“Swimming is a very repetitive exercise,” said Johnson. “When you have a sore wing it’s not good.

“We’ve used the time to get some strength back into that area.”

It wasn’t until early last December that Pratt was able to return to the pool “very minimally,” said Johnson. He began a training schedule in January then in  February started “doing some sort of actual swimming.”

Matching Pratt’s expectations with the reality of the situation was a challenge.

“The whole thing was not to have a relapse,” said Johnson. “That’s why we took it as slowly on the buildup as we did.

“These kids are very competitive and they want to do well. Initially we thought it would be a bit easier.”

Johnson praised the support Pratt received from Swimming Canada and John Atkinson, the high performance director and national coach.

“They were fantastic,” he said. “John came out and talked about what to do.”

Pratt’s weight training coach Lascelles Brown, a four-time Olympian in bobsledding, helped him realize the difference between pushing through pain and managing an injury.

“A lot of athletes push through pain all the time,” said Pratt. “If you ask anybody who was on the Tokyo Olympic team if they had to deal with injuries, I can tell you that they have.

“It’s really just something that comes with sport. If you can manage it well, then you’ll come out the other end better and ready to go.”

Along with Liendo and Knox, Pratt was part of a 2018 camp in Trinidad that brought together some of the country’s most promising young swimmers.

“They took a small group of boys who were good and showed us where we were and what we needed to be,” said Pratt. “We had a clear goal and clear path of what we wanted to do and where we wanted to be.”

At the Budapest 2019 FINA World Junior Championships, Pratt was a member of the men’s 4×100-m medley relay that earned bronze.  At his first senior world championships in 2019 at Gwangju he was 26th in the 200-m backstroke and 36th in the 200-m individual medley.

In 2021, Pratt qualified for Tokyo by winning the 200-m backstroke at the Olympic trials and finishing second in both the 100 back and the 200 IM. He finished 26^th in the 100-m backstroke at the Games.

Not being able to swim reminded Pratt how much he loved the sport.

“I was kind of taking it for granted until it was taken away from me,” he said. “Then I realized how much I really liked it.

“It’s one thing not to want to do something. It’s another thing to have someone tell you, you can’t do this. It was a hard time and a sad time when I wasn’t in the water with my friends, working hard.”

As his strength returns, so does Pratt’s confidence.

“I was a little worried about hurting myself because I didn’t want to start from point zero,” he said. “I’ve gotten quite a bit stronger. Now I’ve just got to start moving again.”