MONTREAL \u2014 Alex Dawson moved his family from England to northwestern Alberta some 11 years ago, embarking on an unlikely journey to help build up the swimming program in Grande Prairie.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t know it then, but his seven-year-old son, Oliver, would become one of its biggest success stories.<\/p>\n
Now 18, Oliver Dawson has spent the last couple of months breaking Canadian breaststroke records and establishing himself as one of the country\u2019s brightest swimming prospects.<\/p>\n
\u201cI moved to Grande Prairie to coach. Having Ollie come along and do that, be successful to that (extent), that was not by design,\u201d Alex Dawson said with a laugh in a phone interview. \u201cIt\u2019s just how it goes, right? He\u2019s done many other sports, but he always came back to swimming.\u201d<\/p>\n
On consecutive days in May, Oliver Dawson took down a pair of long-standing Canadian standards at the AP Race London International. He posted a time of 27.29 seconds in the 50-metre breaststroke to surpass Scott Dickens\u2019 2009 benchmark, then went 59.55 in the 100 preliminary heat to beat another Dickens record from 2012.<\/p>\n
Dawson lowered his own time to 59.33 in the final, finishing just 0.18 behind childhood idol and world-record holder Adam Peaty of Britain.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo look at the board and see that I was under the time, to know that it was broken and now I hold that is pretty crazy,\u201d Dawson said. \u201cTo think I\u2019m the fastest Canadian ever in the 50 and 100 and super close in the 200 is outstanding.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then to race Adam Peaty, that was a whole other thing to basically go toe-to-toe with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dawson expects the 200 record of 2:08.84 \u2014 set by Mike Brown at the 2008 Beijing Games \u2014 to drop before the summer is over. He was scheduled to race in the 100 at the Canadian swimming trials Thursday night in Montreal after claiming the 50 and 200 titles.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the type of outcome his dad couldn\u2019t have imagined when they packed up for Canada in 2015.<\/p>\n
Alex Dawson had been the longtime head coach at City of Leicester Swimming Club when he reached his ceiling and began looking for a new challenge, whether in England or abroad.<\/p>\n
There were several job opportunities, but the prospect of becoming Director of Swimming for the Grande Prairie Piranhas quickly caught his attention.<\/p>\n
Dawson had a relationship with Swimming Canada high-performance director John Atkinson and then-Swim Alberta coach Mark Perry \u2014 both British natives \u2014 and wanted to be a part of the blossoming swimming program in the country.<\/p>\n
Grande Prairie even had an Olympic-sized pool \u2014 something his Leicester facility did not \u2014 and offered a welcome change of pace.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up in a village as a little kid and my wife did, too, and Grande Prairie is not a very big place,\u201d he said. \u201cI could buy a house, wave my kid off to school, then I could go to work and then I\u2019d be back as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cA bit more time together as opposed to being in the rat race in England.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oliver, meanwhile, had a quick rise in Canada.<\/p>\n
After coming up through the Piranhas program, he chose to swim for his adopted country internationally, becoming a citizen at 14. A year later, he made the world junior team, and a year after that he won the Olympic trials at 16, though he fell short of making the Paris Games roster.<\/p>\n
Dawson\u2019s emergence is good news for the Canadian swimming team, which has long been searching for someone to fill the breaststroke void in the men\u2019s medley relay.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a leg of the men\u2019s medley relay that we were looking to develop, but you can\u2019t produce senior males overnight,\u201d said Atkinson, also Swimming Canada\u2019s national coach. \u201cIf you look at where Oliver is \u2026 he has come on and progressed all year in both the 100 and more importantly the 200, and still having speed for the 50.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo years ago he was a young man, now he\u2019s turning into a man. When you look at his physique and what he has done and how he\u2019s swimming the race, both he and his dad have done a great job.\u201d<\/p>\n
His role as a breaststroke specialist has already paid off. Dawson contributed to Canada\u2019s mixed medley relay bronze at last summer\u2019s world championships in Singapore.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat piece has always been missing, so to fill that spot, yeah, means quite a lot,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m going to do my best and hopefully I can do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The father-and-son duo will both start new chapters in the fall.<\/p>\n
Alex will coach next season at the Killarney Swim Club in Calgary and Oliver is heading to the University of Indiana on a scholarship to train under veteran coach Ray Looze.<\/p>\n
Dawson has dreams of making his Olympic debut at the Los Angeles Games in 2028, but first he plans to make the most of this summer.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s set to compete in the Commonwealth Games from July 23 to Aug. 2 in Glasgow, Scotland, and the Pan Pacific Championships from Aug. 12 to 15 in Irvine, Calif.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 9, 2026.<\/p>\n
Daniel Rainbird, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL \u2014 Alex Dawson moved his family from England to northwestern Alberta some 11 years ago, embarking on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":791505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44,82],"class_list":["post-791504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}