Biography
Alana was born May 3rd, 1998 in Hunan Province, China. She was adopted at the age of 14 months by Carole-Anne Desjardins and Rainer Fischer of Mississauga, Ontario. She has a 23 year old brother named Quinn. Currently, Alana is a junior at Silverthorn Collegiate in Toronto, Ontario graduating in the Spring of 2016. During her spare time Alana enjoys baking, spending time with friends, creating nail art and listening to music.
She started gymnastics in a Mom and Tot class at 20 months on the advice of her paediatrician to help her with her balance and strength. It didn’t take long for her to progress through the rec program and with a love of gymnastics that has become her passion she joined the pre-competitive program at 6 years old.
Being a very active and enthusiastic child Alana was also involved in many other activities besides gymnastics. By 6 years old, she had reached level 8 in swimming. In addition, she played soccer from ages 5 to 12, made the All-Star team and spent 4 years in competitive dance learning the fundamentals of ballet, jazz and tap. Inevitably, gymnastics training required more and more of her time and she made the decision to drop most other activities to focus on her passion.
Alana participated in many ODP (Ontario Development Program) and Invitational competitions until she turned 9 at which time she competed as a pre-novice national (PNN) athlete. By 10 years old (2009) she competed level 8 then moved up to level 9 where she qualified and placed at the Eastern Canadian Championships in 2011. However, an injury kept her out of competition for 2 seasons. Undeterred, she continued training and has been competing in Level 10 for the past 2 years where she has just recently placed 8th AA at the 2015 Canadian National Championships in the National Open category which is testimony to her perseverance, hard work and passion for the sport.
Her competitive drive to excel in sports may have rubbed off from her father, Rainer, who was captain of the 1976 Canadian Olympic judo team in Montreal. He was also a Gold Medalist at the 1975 Pan American Games in Mexico City. Her mother, Carole-Anne, was an amateur competitive bodybuilder in the 1980s.