Bothwell's Nick Wammes leaves Sunday night for Paris and while he will miss Friday's opening night ceremonies, his eyes are on the prize and maintaining routine.
"It is our final prep and racing at the games is priority. We are pretty used to travelling to Europe and we usually do about a week before racing," said Wammes. "We get there Monday morning and that's exactly a week until we race."
This is Wammes second Olympic games after competing in Tokyo back in 2020 in the men's sprint and keirin events where he finished 14th and 27th respectively.
"I think every games is extremely special and you get to represent Canada on the big stage is an honour and a privilege so I'm excited for what Paris is going to bring," said Wammes.
The 24-year-old athlete's qualifying journey was a long one, it took 18 months, one he documented on YouTube with a series of vlogs.
"It's been something fun to do for the last little while. I took on YouTube beginning of 2023 as a new creative challenge and it's been something that's been growing quite a bit," said Wammes.
Proving his point, the cyclist currently has over 46,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel.
"I'm surprised at how big it's gotten honestly. But I wanted to document the Olympic qualifying journey because our Olympic qualifying process is 18 months long, we started back in February 2023... I wanted to document that and was looking for a new creative outlet cause I needed a new challenge from Instagram and TikTok," explained Wammes.
Wammes and his partner, fellow team Canada cyclist Sarah Orban, plan to release a documentary of their Olympic journey that will showcase more behind-the-scenes moments and their relationship getting to the games. That video should come out sometime in September or October.
For now, Wammes is focused on preparing for the Olympics with his first race on Monday, August 5.
"We've done most of our big training work now, we are into our final rest and taper. So, just a lot of getting the body ready, making sure it's ready to perform. Lots of rest, lots of massage therapy, physiotherapy, just making sure everything is working 100 per cent," said Wammes. "We've done a lot of the big training work so far, lots of gym work, lots of stuff on the track, just kind of getting the final touches on now."
This won't be Wammes first time on the Paris track. He previously competed on it back in 2022 for the World Championships.
"It's a really nice track, it's a fast track...there should be some Olympic records maybe even world records broken there -- I'm really excited."