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Canada basketball

Olympian Overview: Team Captain Kim Gaucher

For Kim Gaucher the 2016 Summer Olympics are 200 games in the making.

When the SWNT captain takes the floor against China for Canada's first contest of the Rio Games, it will be the 200th time in a remarkable career that Kim has worn her country's colours.

"It's a huge accomplishment to go to World Championships and go to Olympics and I have been teams that haven't been able to qualify," says the 32-year-old forward, who is in her 15th summer with the SWNT.

Kim's SWNT career began as a 17-year-old at the 2001 FIBA Americas Championship. She has since played in Americas seven more times, represented Canada at the FIBA World Championships in 2006, 2010, and 2014, competed in two Pan-Am Games, and suited up for a host of exhibition tournaments.

Rio will be Kim's second Summer Games.

"The waiting has been killer," says Kim, who was one of Canada's top performers, averaging 9.5 points, 5.5 rebounds and 2.5 assists when the team secured its spot in Rio by winning Americas last summer in Edmonton.

"It feels like it's so long ago that we qualified and we've been waiting so long and these last few months have been going by really slowly."

For a time it looked like the Mission, B.C., product wouldn't be back at the Olympics, or join the exclusive 200-game club.

After Canada's stirring quarterfinal appearance at the 2012 London Games, Kim briefly retired. But she kept working out, and after just a few weeks without picking up a basketball, she was back on the hardwood, playing professionally in France.

When she decided to return, it wasn't for only a few games. It wasn't just for a summer.

"It was a four-year commitment that was made," says Kim, and Rio was the goal.

"I wasn't coming back for a World Championships or FIBA Americas," she says.

That fateful decision was 64 SWNT games and four European pro seasons ago. Kim credits her husband for his support over that time.

"He's had to put a lot of his dreams on hold for mine, so that's the hardest part, as you get older and you want to have a family," she says.

But I'm definitely happy that I've stuck around. I'm glad that we're still here."

"No regrets."