Alexandre Despatie Cover Story

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Champion diver Alexandre Despatie on his return to Olympic form.
By Elio Iannacci Photographed by gabor jurina
or Alexandre Despatie, diving is all
about aesthetics. “Every time I step on the
boards, I’m judged by how I look,” says the
two-time Olympic medallist while on set at
his Men’s Fashion cover shoot in Toronto. “It’s a fact I live
with. My form has to be sharp. Every angle of my body is
studied—it’s what I’m marked on.”
At a solid five-foot-eight and 155 pounds, Despatie’s frame
is noticeably well toned. As he approaches the camera in a
brief black swimsuit, an air of confidence radiates from his
diamond-cut build. “Our bodies are our machines—our Formula One race cars,” he later says, after throwing on a pair
of jeans and a T-shirt. “They need to be perfect to run well.”
In the midst of preparing for the London Summer
Games—his fourth Olympiad to date—the Montrealer is
clearly running on overdrive. Heading to the gym six days
a week, he maintains a schedule that befits his title as
Canada’s 36-time senior diving champion. Yet his daily routine—which includes 1,000 crunches, one hour of strength
training, 20 minutes of trampoline work, an indoor cycling
program called PowerWatts and 50 sets of ab exercises
called “pike-ups”—is something he feels “lucky” to be able
to do at all.
“If we’d spoken [last year] when my knee injury happened,
I wouldn’t be sure what to say to you about my situation,”
Despatie says. His diagnosis of tendinitis and bursitis left
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him no choice but to opt out of joining the Canadian diving
team at the 2011 World Games. “The pain wasn’t settling
down,” he explains. “I even started thinking that it might be
the end of my career, because I couldn’t dive in that condition.” With treatment and physical therapy, the 26-year-old
recovered and quickly began to plot another Olympic coup.
“Being back and fitter than ever, the desire and the flame
to win have been reignited,” Despatie says. His return to
form is something he has been sharing with the public since
he began tweeting in January. “Nothing short of a disaster...
this is how I feel,” he posted after what was supposed to be
his comeback performance at the FINA Diving Grand Prix
in February. However, he redeemed himself a week later at
the 2012 World Cup, earning a bronze medal in the threemetre diving category and securing his place at the London
Olympic Games.
Although there have been setbacks, Despatie’s rise seems
fit for an HBO documentary. His training began when he
was five, near his parents’ home in Laval, Que., and spanned
two decades and three coaches as he refined his technique on
the boards. He first made headlines in 1998 at the age of 13,
when he became the youngest diver in history to win a gold
medal at the Commonwealth Games—an achievement recognized in the Guinness Book of Records. Following a slew
of competitions and bouts of heavy training, Despatie made
it to his first Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000, where »
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shirt, $930, by Prada at Holt Renfrew; Shorts, $90, by J.Lindeberg
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“Every time I step on the boards, I’m judged by how I look. It’s a fact I live with.
My form has to be sharp. Every angle of my body is studied—it’s what I’m marked on.”
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ences (he recently raved about attending Stella McCartney’s
Fall 2012 show) and top shopping spots (the Paul Smith
outlet in London is one of his favourites), and spends time
flipping through men’s fashion magazines while waiting
in airport lounges. “I keep buying them because I want
to be up to date on trends,” he says, noting that he enjoys
going to Montreal Fashion Week and is impressed with the
collections of hometown designer Philippe Dubuc. “I love
to dress up, and I don’t have too many occasions for that.
When I do, I like to do it well. I remember really liking
Shia LaBeouf’s look in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
It was really clean-cut. The hair, the three-piece suits and
the shoes—that, to me, was great.”
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apping into Despatie’s celebrity
status in the Canadian diving arena, Gillette
recently chose him—along with 23 other
Olympians from 18 countries—to be an
ambassador for the brand. “Obviously I’m
in chlorine a lot and I have to take care of my skin, so these
products are important to me,” he says of the body wash and
shaving gel he uses during his grooming routine. “Taking
care of myself is something I’m pretty conscious of.”
Aside from manscaping and training, Despatie is a
consummate ritualist. Chapters in his life are recorded in
tattoos. After his first Summer Games in Sydney, he had
his back inked with a maple leaf and the Olympic rings.
A diamond on his inner left arm was later added in solidarity with four diving friends, and a deck of cards with his
astrological sign—Gemini—on his right forearm reminds him
of the spontaneity of his sport. The birth dates of his father
(who manages his career), mother, grandmother and sister
are written on his rib cage. His left forearm reads, “You
will never walk alone” and “Vive tranquillo il villanel con
poco,” an Italian proverb that translates to “He who lives in
tranquility can live with very little.”
The demands of training mean that, for now, Despatie
isn’t in a relationship. “I’ve dated girls who were looking for
more than I could give them,” he says. “I can’t give as much
as relationships demand of me...but I always make that clear
from the beginning so that there’s no confusion.”
For now, Despatie appears to be 100 per cent committed
to his goal of winning a third Olympic medal. “When I do
the things I love, I want them to be the best they can be,” he
says. “I do strive for greatness and I’ve always had it in the
back of my head that I can do better, no matter what. I want
to get as close to perfection as I can.” n
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styled by alon freeman for judyinc.com; grooming by susana hong for p1m.ca; Jacket, $2,350, by Zegna Sport; Swimsuit, Alexandre’s own
he placed fourth overall. Hungry for a medal, he kept his
drive so well fuelled that he was asked to join the Canadian
Olympic team in Athens (2004) and Beijing (2008). In
both cities, he won silver medals in the three-metre springboard competition.
The payoff for this resolve: Despatie is the only diver in
Canadian history to be world champion in all three categories—the one-, three- and 10-metre events. As epic as this
seems, he is not finished with his own diving legacy. “The
Olympic gold is the only one missing for me,” he recently
told TSN. “It’s my dream, my objective.”
Despatie’s competition strategies and approach seem
more similar to a method actor’s process than a professional
athlete’s mantra. This is no accident. The big, shiny silver
ring he wears flashes the tragedy and comedy face masks,
hinting at his plan to shift gears post-diving and pursue
an acting career. The path from athlete to actor may be
a bit chancy—for every Arnold Schwarzenegger and Burt
Reynolds there’s a litter of Dennis Rodmans and John
McEnroes—but Despatie is quick to point out the parallels
between the two occupations.
“Diving is performance,” he says. “It’s being forced to produce something great at a specific moment, not necessarily
when you’re ready. There’s a thing they call ‘the zone’—when
athletes are in full control of themselves. I’ve been there
before, and I know what it is. All that you have—your mind
and heart—must focus to get there. When actors have certain types of scenes, they have to get into that same mindset.
In both cases, you have to shine.”
Despatie has already had a taste of on-screen experience.
He did TV reporting during the Vancouver Winter Olympics
and has appeared in two French-Canadian movies: À vos
marques... Party! (Taking the Plunge) and its sequel, À vos
marques... Party! 2. Intent on taking his second vocation as
seriously as his first, he prepared for the films by studying
with veteran Québécoise actor Louise Laparé. “The one
thing that I hadn’t realized is that although you have your
script, you can play it a million different ways—angry, loving,
calm, etc.,” he says. “She instilled this awareness in me.”
Asked which leading men he looks up to, Despatie is
quick to list Robert DeNiro and Sean Penn. “I recently
saw There Will Be Blood, with Daniel Day-Lewis, and was
made speechless by what he brought to that role,” he says.
“It made me think of Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman and
the intensity he brought to that film. Those kinds of performances make me want to act.”
Despatie is also conscious of looking his best in and out
of the pool. He is given to tweeting about his fashion prefer-