Olympic competitors will feature three from Burlington

Three athletes from Burlington will be competing in the Olympics.

The games, which officially get underway in Paris tomorrow (July 26), will see a contingent of 318 Canadian athletes vying for gold, silver and bronze medals in 35 different sports.

Here are our athletes with their official Olympic biographies:

Adam Dong: badminton

Dong, now 30, competed in his first Pan American Games at Santiago 2023 where he won men’s doubles gold with Nyl Yakura. They had been partners for less than two years after teaming up in late 2021. At that time, Dong was making a comeback after retiring from badminton several years earlier.

Dong had played with one of the top professional teams in China from 2006 until 2014, the year he moved to Canada to pursue his post-secondary education. He began representing Canada internationally in 2016, competing in men’s doubles with Yakura. But after achieving the number one doubles ranking in Canada, Dong decided to step away from competing to focus on raising and supporting his young family. In 2018, he founded the Lions Badminton Training Centre in Burlington.

But he still had some dreams he wanted to realize. So, with the blessing of his family, he worked hard to regain his physical fitness. In December 2021, he and Yakura won their first tournament together, the Mexican International.

In 2022, Dong and Yakura won men’s doubles bronze at the Pan American Championships and competed at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. They upgraded themselves to gold at the Pan American Championships in 2023, a few months before competing at their first BWF World Championships together, which was followed by their triumph at Santiago 2023. Dong and Yakura were back on the podium at the Pan Am Championships in 2024, taking the silver medal.

Ella Jansen: swimming

Nineteen-year-old Jansen has competed at two editions of the World Aquatics Championships, in 2023 and 2024. At the latter, she swam in the prelims of the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay in which Canada went on to win bronze. Her individual highlight of the meet was cracking the top-10 in the 400m individual medley.

In 2023, Jansen won five medals at the World Junior Swimming Championships, highlighted by her silver medal in the 400m IM to which she added four relay medals.

Jansen was named Swimming Canada’s 2022 Breakout Swimmer of the Year. After winning bronze medals in the 400m IM, 400m freestyle, and 200m butterfly at the Canadian Swimming Trials, Jansen was selected to compete at the 2022 Commonwealth Games. She contributed to two relay medals and finished fifth in the 400m IM. Jansen also competed at the Junior Pan Pacific Championships in 2022, winning bronze in the 4x100m freestyle relay.

Jansen competed in her first World Aquatics Swimming World Cup event in October 2022.

Will Jones: sailing

Jones is the skipper of the 49er, a two-handed skiff. He made his Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020, with crewmate Evan DePaul, finishing 19th.

Following DePaul’s retirement in the fall of 2022, Jones teamed up with Justin Barnes to compete at the World Sailing Championships Test Event in The Hague, Netherlands. Encouraged by their performance, they decided to continue competing together. In early 2023, they placed ninth at the US Open Sailing Series in Miami, followed by a fourth-place finish at the US Open Sailing Series in Clearwater. The latter result qualified them for the Santiago 2023 Pan Am Games where they secured a bronze medal and a quota spot for Canada in the 49er for Paris 2024. They earned that Olympic spot for themselves by topping the Canadian standings after two selection regattas. Jones and Barnes were also the top Canadian 49er crew at both the 2023 Sailing World Championships and 2024 49er and 49er FX World Championships.

Early in his career, Jones had raced solo in the C420 and Laser Radial before being attracted to the challenge presented by the skiff class. He first teamed up with DePaul in the summer of 2015 to race in the 49er FX, before moving into the 49er in 2016. Just a year later, they won gold at the 2017 Junior World Championship held at their home training centre in Kingston, Ontario.

Jones and DePaul laid claim to Canada’s Tokyo 2020 spot in the 49er by being the top Canadian boat at the 2020 World Championships for the class. They improved upon their best-ever result at worlds by more than 20 spots, a culmination of their efforts to work on their weaknesses as a lot of small pieces came together.

While attending Queen’s University, Jones represented the school in multiple regattas, which included a victory with his team at the 2016 Student Yachting World Cup in La Rochelle, France.

He is 29-years-old.