A 71-Metre Stage for Diving: Windsor Hosts the Canada Cup 2026

There is a particular kind of silence that falls over a competition aquatic centre in the seconds before a diver leaves the platform, a held breath shared between athlete and spectator that transcends language, nationality, and sporting tradition. Windsor, Ontario, knows that silence well. And on April 9, 2026, when the city's Windsor International Aquatic and Training Centre (WIATC) hosts the opening session of the 2026 Canada Cup of Diving, that silence will ring out once again in a facility that stands, quite literally, without peer anywhere on earth.

At the core of the WIATC is an extraordinary piece of engineering: a competition pool measuring 71 metres in length, 25 metres wide, and ranging in depth from 2.0 metres at its shallow end to 5.2 metres beneath its diving tower. Installed by Myrtha Pools using its exclusive stainless-steel modular technology, it is currently the longest competition swimming pool in the world, an accolade that demands context to be fully appreciated.

This means Windsor can host a World Aquatics 50-meters championship one week, a 25-meters short-course invitational the next, and a diving competition the week after, all without any structural modification to the pool itself.

That level of adaptive flexibility, it’s the result of a deliberate design philosophy that Myrtha Pools brought to this project from the earliest stages. One of the movable bulkheads is equipped with a thermal wall allowing the facility to create areas with up to a 5º C difference in water temperature on either side: enabling, for example, a cooler competition-temperature zone and a warmer community-use zone to operate simultaneously, within the same footprint of water.

"Windsor consistently demonstrates its capacity to host international sport events, supported by a world-class aquatic facility and strong collaboration with municipal and community partners." (Penny Joyce, CEO, Diving Canada, from the news section of www.diving.ca).

For the Canada Cup of Diving, it is the deep end that takes centre stage. A complete World Aquatics compliant diving installation housed within a pool that simultaneously meets the requirements for Olympic-distance swimming competition.

This dual-discipline design is rare. Most venues that host elite diving do so in a dedicated tank, operationally separated from the swimming competition pool. In addition, the moveable floor panel installed in the opposite side of the diving area allows operators to raise or lower the depth in that zone hydraulically, transforming a shallow community-use area into an international swimming competition pool.

The full scope of our work at this facility encompasses five separate water bodies, each serving a distinct purpose within the centre's broader mission to unite elite performance and genuine community access. These four leisure structures are not incidental to the facility's sporting ambitions: their commercial revenues directly subsidise the operating costs of the competition infrastructure. The financial model is elegant and forward-thinking, a high-performance aquatic venue that pays for itself through the joy it brings to local families.

"Our state-of-the-art Windsor International Aquatic and Training Centre has become a sought-after location for talent-packed competitions that continue to strengthen Windsor's status as a world-class sports tourism destination. We built this facility to attract this level of competition, and we have been reaping the benefits for our economy and our tourism and hospitality sectors ever since" Drew Dilkens, Mayor of Windsor (from the news section of www.diving.ca)

The 2026 Canada Cup of Diving, a World Aquatics Recognised Event running from April 9 to 12, is not Windsor's first experience of top-level international diving. In 2025, the city hosted the World Aquatics Diving World Cup itself, the marquee series that serves as the principal competitive showcase beneath the World Championships. That event drew elite athletes from across the globe, sold out the WIATC's 900-seat spectator capacity, and was broadcast in 50 countries.

The 2026 event will feature all eight Olympic diving disciplines - Women's and Men's 3m Springboard, Women's and Men's 10m Platform, and both Synchronised events, plus a team competition. Major diving nations including China, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia are confirmed attendees. Divers are expected from more than ten countries in total, many of them building competitive profiles ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games.

In the twelve years since the opening the Windsor International Aquatic Centre has become the centrepiece of Windsor's identity as a sport-tourism destination, attracting major national and international competitions in swimming, diving, and water polo, and generating meaningful economic impact for the city and the broader Windsor-Essex region. Its design, developed in collaboration with the project architects to meet the City of Windsor's vision for a facility serving both elite and community needs, is an enduring example of what aquatic infrastructure can achieve when it is conceived with genuine ambition.

When the world's finest divers step onto the platforms at the WIATC this April, they will do so in water that Myrtha built, held by walls and a floor that Myrtha engineered, in a facility that stands as the clearest possible expression of our core conviction: that the best aquatic environments are those that serve everyone, from the Olympic champion at the apex of their sport to the eight-year-old taking their first swimming lesson, and every swimmer, diver, and community member in between.

That is what it means to build aquatic legacies.