The granddaughter of a Cobden resident is heading to the Olympics for a second time.
In 2012, Melissa Bishop, who grew up in the Lake Dore area and still has family there, including her parents Doug and Alison, competed at the Olympics in London, England, where she didn’t make it onto the podium.
However, she did earn a gold in the 800 metres at the 2015 Pan American Games held in Toronto, with a time of 1:59.62.
This summer, the granddaughter of Cobden’s Tory Hawkins, and the late Orly Hawkins, Melissa is heading to the Olympics in Rio…again, hoping to make it onto the podium.
To earn the chance to get to Rio 2016, Melissa finished her 800-metre race in Edmonton this past Sunday well ahead of the pack with a time of 1:59:32, which is also a new championship record, which was an added bonus to securing another shot at an Olympic medal.
“That wasn’t even on our minds going in,” she said referring to her coach Dennis Fairhall. “It’s real exciting to have that and now a gold medal and a spot on the Rio team.”
This will be the pair’s second time at the Olympics. Melissa said they have both grown a lot since their first time in 2012.
“In the past four years we’ve gained a lot of experience,” she said. “We’ve had different scenarios to work with. We’ve had things maybe not go our way, but we had to work through them.”
