Leo Thornley won’t leave the London Olympics with a paddling medal, but his hard work over the past several years might help a Nova Scotian get to the podium.

Thornley is the director of sport science at the Canadian Sport Centre Atlantic in Halifax and will work with the canoe/kayak team, including Nova Scotians Mark de Jonge, Ryan Cochrane and Jason McCoombs during their time at the 2012 Olympics.

He’s part of a sports science and sports medicine team that has worked with the athletes in their preparation for London and will continue to provide support and guidance during the competition.

“For me, it’s awesome,” said Thornley, a Great Britain native who studied for his masters in kinesiology at Dalhousie from 2000-2002 and remained in the province. “It’s the pinnacle from a professional standpoint. I was only a mediocre athlete and I was never good enough to actually make it all the way to the Games. For me the goal was much more on the professional side of things.”

He’s assisted with Nova Scotia Olympians in the past, but never got to be at the finish line. Now he will.

“My profession is all about preparation. So actually being there is a bit of bonus. I worked with the athletes in the lead-up to Athens and Beijing.

“In the last couple of Games I’ve been sitting there in the early mornings watching TV and texting people at the Games. So to actually be there this time will be pretty cool.”

Thornley’s work gets to the minute aspects of athletic performance. He’s in the business of preparing an athlete’s body to find an extra split second in competition.

In the case of the Nova Scotians, all sprint paddlers, the races are often decided by centimetres. His job is to break down the components of performance on the physical side of things.

“So if we take our sprint paddlers, we know that being strong and powerful are important components of racing really fast on the water. So it’s my job to help break those components down and test them and make training recommendations, then do that training and see if those aspects have improved.

“So power in the gym, or aerobic capacity on the water, what their endurance is like, it’s my job to objectively measure and quantify those aspects because we know we’re going to need to improve those over time and we can’t know if we have improved it if we haven’t measured it.”

Thornley is part of an integrated support team that surrounds high-performance athletes today.

“Those details are the difference between winning and losing. Very much so. So four to eight years ago, particularly in Canada, this kind of stuff might have been a bit of a luxury for preparation. But now it’s almost a necessity to understand the athlete in that level of detail, to really try to improve both their strengths and their weaknessess so it leaves nothing to chance.”

He said all athletes are different and no single model works for each.

“If you actually look, even within our Nova Scotia athletes at the Games, you’ll find examples of different types of people. Talent is there for sure, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. Because you need that temperament and that discipline and that work ethic to go along with that talent.

“Some people can make up for not a huge amount of talent with a huge amount of work ethic. Some people might work out a little bit less for a huge amount of talent. But on the world stage, which these Games are all about, it’s people who have all of it, who have that talent and the work ethic and the discipline and the temperment all together.”

His work is mostly done. He’s been helping athletes with their recoveries at the end of each day with a focus on relaxation and proper rest.

“There is not a lot of fitness-building left to be done; it’s now just getting rid of the fatigue that needs to be done.”

The Canadian paddlers only arrived in London this week after a training camp in France. Windsor’s Cochrane and partner Hugues Fournel of Quebec will be first up in the K-2 1,000 on Monday, but their best event is the K-2 200 on Aug. 10.

Halifax’s de Jonge (K-1 200) and Dartmouth’s McCoombs (C-1 200) also begin Aug. 10.

(mmosher@herald.ca)