The Summer Olympic Games

Transcription

Globe Sports Page 7 0
KATHERINE HULL OF AUSTRALIA FIRED A THREE-UNDER-PAR
69 TO EDGE SE RI PAK OF SOUTH KOREA BY ONE STROKE
AND WIN THE CANADIAN WOMEN’S OPEN
SECTION R
MONDAY, AUGUST 18, 2008
GLOBESPORTS.COM
Chat with Adam Kreek
of the eights crew,
11 a.m. EDT
globesports.com
Weather Cloudy, 27C
Gold medals China 35, United States 19, Britain 11, Canada 2
Track shocker Tyler Christopher fails to advance to the final of the 400 metres. Page 2 0
ROWING
Righting the ship
Canadian men’s eight atone for poor showing in 2004 by leading wire-to-wire and grabbing gold in Beijing
BY MATTHEW SEKERES BEIJING
W
hen rower Adam Kreek
leaped from a floating
podium into knee-deep
water after winning his gold
medal on Sunday, a zealous
Olympic official blocked his
path to the public gallery and
tried to maintain order in what
was becoming a boisterous Canadian celebration.
Kreek’s mission was to get to
his wife, Rebecca Sterritt, who
was sitting with a collection of
Canadian fans, and present her
with the roses given to medal
winners. But the official reacted as though Kreek was a Tibetan protester set on
embarrassing the Chinese,
turning Kreek back before he
reached the stands.
“I had to give flowers to my
wife,” Kreek said. “She has
supported me for the last four
years.
“Not even the Chinese military could have stopped me.”
Minutes earlier, eights-boat
crewmate Jake Wetzel tossed
his flowers high in the air and
covered his mouth like a guilty
schoolboy as they landed near
the back heels of officials
standing at attention for the
Olympic anthem.
What the Canadians lacked
in decorum, however, they
made up for in performance on
Sunday.
The world defending champions rowed their best time of
the year, a blistering 5 minutes
23.89 seconds on the slow,
choppy water at the Shunyi
Rowing-Canoeing Park, to win
the blue-ribbon race of the
Olympic regatta. Favoured
Canada held off a late charge
from silver-medal-winning
Britain, which was more than
one second behind, and the
Olympic defending champion
United States, which settled for
the bronze.
“We worked eight years for
this medal,” Kreek said. “Today
is an absolutely incredible day
and we’re going to stay in the
moment.”
Four years ago, five members
of the current crew entered the
Athens Games undefeated over
two seasons and believing they
could not be beaten. But captain Kyle Hamilton, coxswain
Brian Price, Ben Rutledge, Ke-
GOLD
SILVER
BRONZE
Carol Huynh of Hazelton, B.C.,
captured Canada’s first gold
medal Saturday by defeating a
Japanese opponent in the 48kilogram wrestling class.
Scott Frandsen of Kelowna, B.C.,
and David Calder of Victoria
(top left) celebrate their silvermedal win in the men’s pair
rowing event Saturday.
Melanie Kok of St. Catharines,
Ont., and Tracy Cameron of
Shubenacadie, N.S., (top centre)
in women’s double sculls; Iain
Brambell, Jon Beare, Mike Lewis
and Liam Parsons in men’s
vin Light and Kreek lost to the
Americans in the preliminary
heat, as both boats set world
records. Mentally shaken, the
Canadians fell to fifth place in
the final. Hamilton called it the
worst day of his life.
“For me, it’s not about reconciling [the past], it’s about
winning,” Hamilton said.
Sunday, there was no doubt.
They won it wire-to-wire. A
few metres before the finish
line, Price threw both arms
skyward, single fingers raised
on each.
The Canadian men’s eight roar
across the finish line on Sunday
and celebrate their gold-medal
victory. ‘Today is an absolutely
incredible day,’ crew member
Adam Kreek said.
JAMIE SQUIRE/GETTY IMAGES
77 SEE ’ROWING’ PAGE 3
INSIDE
lightweight fours (bottom); Ryan
Cochrane of Victoria in the 1,500metre swim; Tonya Verbeek of
Beamsville, Ont., in the
55-kilogram class in wrestling.
FRED LUM/THE GLOBE AND MAIL;
JONATHAN HAYWARD
/THE CANADIAN PRESS;
PAUL CHIASSON/THE CANADIAN PRESS
SPORTS EDITOR: TOM MALONEY 66 FEEDBACK TO [email protected]
S
THE GLOBE AND MAIL
C A N A D A ’ S N AT I O N A L N E W S PA P E R
The Summer Olympic Games:
Canada’s Golden Moments
T H E G LO B E A N D M A I L
O LY M P I C G A M E S
F
or those of us who spent university
domicile, located just 40 yards from Israel’s
days squinting at microfiche news-
building. Among the escapees, equestrian
paper files to research essays ... well, where
Ian Millar, then 25, is making his record
were you then, e-book?
10th Olympics appearance in London.
This technology presents the text of the
Prior to the 1984 Los Angeles Games,
stories in essay-perfect type, allowing read-
staff writer James Christie describes the
ers to quickly click through coverage of 14
exodus of Soviet -bloc countries, four years
Olympics since 1904. With original Globe
after Western countries boycotted the Mos-
and Mail pages included, we see how pre-
cow Games.
sentation has developed dramatically from
In 1904, Canadian George Lyon was the
100 years ago, when the victory by Cana-
last gold medalist in golf, in match play
dian George Goulding in the 10,000-metre
against the American H. Candler Egan. Golf
racewalk merited a half-column of type
hasn’t been contested in the Olympics since
without a picture, and led into results from
that match; the sport is to return in 2016.
the city lawn tennis championships.
Most significantly, the book shows Olym-
By way of warning, some of the seemingly insensitive language in the stories
pic sport intertwining with history, and the
may jar the reader. A story from the Berlin
Olympics making history on their own. In
Games in 1936 describes Betty “Co-ed” Tay-
the 1928 paper, a story about the victory
lor, a “pretty Hamilton girl” aged 19, qualify-
of Vancouverite Percy Williams in the 100
ing for the women’s 40-metre hurdles. In
metres describes the achievement as top-
1928, one of Percy Williams’ competitors
ping “a glorious day for the British empire.”
is described as a “big British negro.” If such
The front page carries an article about the
words were written today, the writer would
merger of Chrysler and Dodge.
be sent to sensitivity training if not dis-
Forty years hence, it remains both sicken-
missed on the spot. We have evolved.
ing and captivating to read about a Palestinian terrorist group carrying out the 1972
Munich Massacre by assassinating 11 Israeli
athletes during the Summer Games. Canadians describe being ushered out of their
Tom Maloney
Sports Editor
St. Louis 1904
Stockholm 1912
Amsterdam 1928
Berlin 1936
Munich 1972
Montreal 1976
Moscow 1980
Los Angeles 1984
Seoul 1988
Barcelona 1992
Atlanta 1996
Sydney 2000
Athens 2004
Beijing 2008
1904
St. Louis
George Lyon
is champion
the sixth hole, Lyon having hard luck on his
drive, and failing to reach the green on his
third. The seventh was halved in five, Egan
laying Lyon a perfect stymie. Lyon won the
eighth by getting a long putt, while Egan,
with a putt of twelve feet, took the ninth
hole, 2 to Lyon’s 3.
The tenth and eleventh holes were halved
in five. Egan took the twelfth, 4 to 5, by a
brilliant second and a long putt, and was
only 2 down to Lyon. The thirteenth was
halved, but Egan got the next in bogie figures. The fifteenth went to Lyon on superior
putting, and the sixteenth was halved in 5.
A brilliant 4 gave Egan the next hole, but
on the eighteenth he was short on his third,
and had to be content with a half. This left
Lyon 1 up at the end of the first half of the
match.
S
t Louis, Sept. 24 – H. Candler Egan,
amateur golf champion of the United
States, was beaten in the final round for
the Olympic golf championship today by
George S. Lyon of the Lambton Golf Club of
Toronto. The score was 3 up and 2 to play in
Lyon’s favor.
The victory of the Canadian was a complete surprise. Egan’s double title off western and national champion, the later won
little more than a fortnight ago at Baltusrol
against the leading cracks of the country,
had given the Chicago man a prestige which
the earlier rounds of the present tournament had considerably strengthened. Lyon,
on the other hand, had barely escaped
defeat on Friday at the hands of F. O. Newton of Seattle, and when today’s match was
started Egan was a pronounced favorite.
In his match today with Egan Lyon played
a well balanced game, that showed the
result of careful practice. Starting out, he
drove the first green and holed in 3, Egan
putting badly. The second hole was lost
by Egan because he was short on his approach, and missed an easy putt. The third
was halved in four, each failing to make the
green on his tee shot. A long putt of eight
feet gave Lyon the fourth hole, and his 15foot putt won the fifth. Egan lifted his ball
with a mashie, negotiated a stymie and won
The scores by strokes:
Mr. Lyon ………. 3 5 4 3 4 5 5 5 3–37
Mr. Egan ………. 4 6 4 4 5 4 5 6 2–40
Mr. Lyon ………. 5 5 6 5 4 5 5 6 5–46–83
Mr. Egan ………. 5 5 4 5 3 6 5 5 5–43–83
Starting out after luncheon, Lyon pressed
his advantage, and on the twentieth hole he
was 2 up. The next was halved. Egan apparently scented defeated, for on the next five
holes he made a splendid effort to recover
lost ground. But in spite of some brilliant
shots, Lyon was still 2 up at the twenty-
6
seventh. The thirtieth was halved. On the
next Egan won at 4 to 5. The thirty second
was halved, and as Lyon won the next two,
the Canadian gained the championship by a
score of 3 up and 2 to go.
The score by strokes:
Mr. Lyon ………. 4 5 4 4 6 4 5 5 4–41
Mr. Egan ………. 4 6 4 4 7 5 4 5 3–42
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“I deserve to lose,” said Mr. Egan after the
game. “The golf played by Mr. Lyon was
superior to mine. Any time I fail to get away
tee shots I merit defeat. Honestly, I may say
that I was not in physical condition to play
a hard game at any time this week. Last
week’s team matches were trying on me,
and 36 holes a day for more than a week
made me stale, to say nothing of the long
play in the western and the national, and
the long railway journey.”
7
1912
Stockholm
Another
Canadian
is champion
by the beginning of the last lap and continued to increase it till he crossed the tape,
when he was 80 yards ahead. Time 46, 28 2-5
Heats in the Hurdles
In the hurdle race the United States team
took eight firsts and one second. The majority of the heats were not races because
in most cases there were only two runners,
and as first and second in each heat are entitled to compete in the semi-finals there was
no incentive to fast running. Other nations
represented in the semi-finals are: England
by H. E. H. Blakeney and G. R. L. Anderson;
France by 3 men, and Finland, Hungary,
Germany, Italy and Chile by one man each.
Frank Lukeman of Montreal was third to
Powell, Great Britain, and Windell, United
States.
STOCKHOLM
T
he only events this morning apart
from the preliminary rounds in the
wrestling competition and a display of gymnastics by a German team, were the final
heat of the 10,000 metres walk, in which
George Goulding of Canada won a deserved
victory, and the eleven trial heats in the 110
metre hurdle race.
Goulding all the Way
Nine competitors started in the final of the
10,000 metres walk. George Goulding of
Toronto took the lead immediately and was
engaged in a hard race with E. J. Webb, England, from the beginning. F. Altamani, Italy,
who secured third place, and A. Ramussen
of Denmark, who was fourth, were the only
other men left in two miles before the finish, A. C. C. St. Newman, South Africa, W. J.
Palmer, England, and W. G. Yates, England,
having fallen by the way. The last named
was disqualified. The only representative of
the United States was Frederick H. Keiser,
and the pace proved too fast for him, so he
dropped out after doing two miles.
At the beginning of the last mile, the
Canadian led the Englishman by 30 yards
and the Italian was 300 yards behind Webb.
Goulding has increased his lead to 50 yards
Craig a Double Champion
200 metres flat race, final – Ralph C. Craig,
United States, first; Donald F. Lippincott,
United States, second; W. R. Applegarth,
England, third. Time 31 7-10
Putting the weight, right and left hand,
final – Ralph Rose, United States, first; Patrick J. McDonald, United States, second ; E.
Niklander, Finland, third.
Halpenny’s Hard Luck
The final of the pole-vaulting began with
eleven competitors – G. B. Dukes, New York
A. C.; Mark S. Wright, Dartmouth; Frank D.
10
Murphy, University of Illinois; S. H. Bellah,
Multnomah A.C.; Frank J. Coyle, University of
Chicago; W. H. Fritz, Cornell University; Frank
T. Nelson, Yale; Harry S. Babcock, Columbia
University; W. Halpenny, Montreal; R. Pasemann, Germany; and B. Uggla, Sweden.
Nelson, Babcock, Wright, Bellah, Murphy,
Halpenny and Uggla remained for the attempt at 2 metres 30 centimetres. Nelson
and Babcock cleared the bar on the first try,
Uggla, Halpenny and Wright failed: Murphy
went over gracefully, but Bellah fell before he
reached the height of the bar.
When the Canadian’s turn came again he
topped the bar without touching, but lost
control and fell to the ground like a log on
his chest, his arm outstretched. He staggered
to his feet, blood dripping from his nostrils,
and was helped to the dressing-room, where
he fainted. The American contingent on
the stands cheered him on sympathetically.
When the bar was raised to 3 metres 95 centimetres (12 feet 11 1-2 inches) the most intense
interest was manifested by the spectators.
Babcock, who was in fine condition, went
over with a clean jump the first time, but
Nelson and Wright came down with the bar
on all three of their trials. This gave Babcock
the victory with Nelson and Wright tied for
second place.
11
Hodgson Canada’s
first champion
STOCKHOLM
T
he five thousand metres race was
practically a constant battle between
Kolehmainen (Finland) and Bouin (France),
the rest being nowhere. The pair kept together all through, with Bouin leading most
of the time. Porter (Britain) retired at the
eleventh lap, Keeper (Canada) in the eighth.
Hutson (Britain) and Bonhag (U.S.A.) led
the rest of the field, Decouteau of Canada
being unplaced.
It was a great finish, Bouin, gasping for
breath, being beaten almost on the tape.
Hutson also beat Bonhag, after a great
spurt, by a yard, while 150 yards separated
second and third. Kolehmainen’s time, 14
minutes 30 3-5 seconds, is a world’s record.
The 1,500 metres final furnished one of
the greatest thrills of the meeting. A harder
struggle has seldom been seen on the cinder
path. Melvin W. Sheppard, I.A.A.C., drew the
inside place for the start, with H. A. Arnaud,
France; John Paul Jones, Cornell; Oscar F.
Hedlund, Boston A.A., and A. N. S. Jackson,
England, in the order named.
In order to get to the front Jackson had to
run around four men in the last lap, which
he did at the final turn.
The race in the last hundred yards was
a magnificent one. Until the runners had
reached within ten yards of the tape the
event might have belonged either to Jackson or to Abel R. Kiviat, I.A.A.C., but the
Oxford University athlete fairly leaped
ahead and carried off the victory.
The Frenchman, Arnaud, and the three
Swedes, J. Zander, E. Bjorn and E. Wide,
made the running in the first lap. E. Von
Sigel, Germany, made a hard try, but outran
his powers, and was left behind in the home
stretch.
Jackson was more exhausted when he
dropped to the grass after the race than any
competitor has been at this meeting. He
fainted, and the doctors came to his assistance
and worked over him for half an hour before
he regained his strength enough to stand.
Malisch, were first, second and third in the
final of the 200 metre swim, breast stroke.
Bathe covered the course in 3 minutes 1 4-5
seconds.
The final heat of the 100 metre swimming
was won by the Hawaiian “Duke” Kahanamoku. Healy of Australia was second,
and Kenneth Huszagh, Chicago, A. A., third:
time 1 minute 3 2-3 seconds, which is one
second slower than the world’s record established by Kahanamoku in his prevous heats.
Bretting, Germany; Longworth, Australia;
and Ramme, Germany, also competed.
Hodgson the Swimming Champion
George Hodgson of Montreal won the final
heat of the 1,500 metres swimming race. J.
L. Hatfield, Great Britain, was second and
Harold Hardwick, Australia, third.
In winning this event Hodgson broke
three records. He covered one thousand metres in 14 minutes 37 seconds, and the 1,500
metres in 22 minutes flat. This beats Taylor’s
Olympic record made at London in 1906 by
two minutes and 33 seconds. Hodgson continued, completing the mile in 23 minutes
34½ seconds.
The Germans, Bathe, Luetzow and
12
1928
Amsterdam
Canadian Wins
100-Metre Final
ercy Williams, 20-year-old Vancouver
youth, today brought to Canada world
supremacy in the Olympic 100 metres, one
of the greatest contests of the Olympiad,
thus fulfilling the glorious promise of his
achievements in Canada and in the opening-day trials on Sunday.
It was a day of glorious achievement for
the British Empire. Added to the sparkling
performance of the Vancouver streak was
the victory in the 400-metre hurdles of Lord
David Burghley of England and the winning
of the 16-pound hammer-throw by Dr. Patrick O’Callaghan, brawny Irishman. “Lord
Davy” earned his points in a thrilling final
in which the defeated contestants included
F. Morgan Taylor of the United States, the
champion, and record-holder, and Frank
Cuhel, another much-fancied member of
Uncle Sam’s contingent.
and cleverness in his race that stamped him
as one of the world’s finest sprinters.
The Canadian boy’s time in the final was
10 4-5 seconds. In an earlier semi-final he
ran a close second to MacAllister of the
United States in 10 3-5 seconds, equalling
the Olympic record. Williams set this time
himself in a heat yesterday, and he had also
run the distance in 10 3-5 seconds in Canada.
The world record is 10 2-5 seconds, held by
Charley Paddock, California.
Canadian headquarters were all excited by
William’s victory, and the spirit of exultation
undoubtedly strung the morale of all competing Canadians in all branches of sport,
even higher than before. Captain J. R. Cornelius, veteran Canadian coach, and a canny
Seat to boot, was undoubtedly elated with
the Vancouver youth’s feat, but he pointed
out, with characteristic caution, that the
games were not over yet.
Thanks to Williams, the Canadian flag was
hoisted on the Olympic pole today. The victory recalled that of Bobby Kerr of Hamilton
in the 200 metres at London in 1908.
Wins by One Yard
Williams, a mere boy among the redoubtable sprinters who opposed him to the final,
swept through to win by a yard over J. E.
London, big British negro. Lammers of Germany was third. The Canadian, altogether
apart from his speed, displayed coolness
Edwards in Final
The second feature of the day, so far as Canada was concerned, was Phil Edwards’s great
race in the 800-metre semi-final, in which
he ran a close second to Lloyd Hahn of the
United States, and thus qualified for tomorrow’s final. Edwards, representing Hamilton
W. H. INGRAHAM
STAFF CORRESPONDENT OF THE CANADIAN PRESS
AMSTERDAM
P
15
Olympic Club, led until Hahn, with a glorious burst of speed, passed him just before
the tape was broken. Martin of France,
record-holder at the distance, was third. The
immense crowd were irresistibly brought to
their feet by the thrilling finish.
Those who witness the 800-metre final
tomorrow will not likely forget it for a long
time if the racing in the semi-finals is any
criterion. B. Little of Winnipeg ran a great
race in his semi-final today but was fourth,
failing to qualify, and the third Canadian
800-metre runner, A. W. Wilson of Montreal,
was unlaced in his semi-final with redoubtable opponents.
John Fitzpatrick of Hamilton was a third
Canadian eliminated today, but he was in
the 100-metre semi-final, and as Williams
won the final the Hamilton man was well
satisfied.
eliminated, Jane Bell of Toronto running
unplaced in a formidable group, the winner
of which was Fraulein Schmidt of Germany
in 12 4-5 seconds
Tomorrow four finals will be decided: 800
metres, in which Canada will be represented
by Phil Edwards; women’s 100 metres, in
which Canada had the three girls named
above; women’s discus throw, in which Fanny Rosenfeld, Toronto, is a probable entrant,
and broad jump, in which Alec Munro may
possibly compete.
John Fitzpatrick of Hamilton after a false
start in the semi-final on the fourth track
was slow in getting away, but he came up
strongly in the finish with the bunch. The
decision was very close, and only after five
minutes’ consultation was the first place
awarded to London. Fitzpatrick came
fourth. Any advantage he might have had
after getting in his stride was spoiled by being run in a pocket from which he found it
impossible to clear himself.
Williams broke exceptionally fast, in the
other semi-final, but gradually gained on his
rivals. MacAllister, however, edged in front
by a foot at the finish.
Three Girls Qualify
And besides Edwards in the 800-metre final
Canada has three women finalists to watch
in the 100 metres tomorrow. The girls, who
say Canada will have the women’s 100-metre title as well as the men’s, are Fanny
Rosenfeld, Ethel Smith and Myrtle Cook,
all of Toronto. Miss Rosenfeld and Miss
Smith ran one-two in one semi-final, in 12
2-5 seconds, and Myrtle Cook ran second in
another to Fanny Robinson, United States,
in the same time. One Canadian girl was
Williams Breaks Fast
Williams broke exceptionally fast, sticking
his chest out at the start and not withdrawing it until he had won. He gradually surged
ahead of his competitors, which could not
16
quite match the gruelling pace the young
Canadian set.
He successfully withstood the closing
drive of London, the British negro, leaping across the finish line with a sensational
swoop to win by a full yard. London was a
step ahead of George Lammers, Germany.
Wykoff, United States, was fourth.
There was a dispute about fifth and sixth
places, the judges tentatively placing Legg
of South Africa fifth and McAllister of the
United States sixth place pending development of pictures of the finish.
Afterward Phil Edwards and B. Little, Canadian 800-metre runners, carried Williams on
their shoulders to the dressing-room, with
the crowd breaking out into applause time
and time again.
In token of the victory Canada’s flag was
mounted on the Olympic pole at 4:40 p.m.,
while the band played “The Maple Leaf.” To
the right of it the Union Jack, celebrating
London’s second-place effort, was raised,
while the German flag was raised to the left,
for Lammers’s achievement in capturing
third place.
The Canadians in the stands sang “The
Maple Leaf” more or less in time with the
band, and if the songsters lacked some
harmony they lacked nothing in vigor and
feeling.
Williams Causes Sensation
It was noted that after the sensational Canadian victory in the sprint the edge seemed
taken off the remainder of the day’s program. Most were content to discuss Williams’s feat. The British in the field and
in the stands were jubilant at the Empire
carrying off the honors of the day. Here and
there Scotsmen, Englishmen and Irishmen,
in company with Australians and South Africans, could be seen arm-in-arm looking for
the Canadians to offer congratulations.
Lord Burghley was off to a good start in
the 400 metres final, and led virtually all the
way, though a staggering start made it difficult to judge the positions until the runners
entered the stretch where all six finalists
were closely bunched.
The U.S. pair were neck and neck with
the Briton over the last hurdle, but Lord
Burghley had the most sprint and won by
two yards.
The Englishman’s triumph was cheered
vigorously throughout the stands as “Lord
Davy,” pink-cheeked and smiling, was carried off the track on the shoulders of his
compatriots.
17
The Victor
CANADIAN PRESS DISPATCH
VA N C O U V E R
B
orn in Vancouver on May 19, 1908,
Percy Williams, winner of the 100-metre final at the Olympic Games, showed class
as a sprinter from his earliest school days.
In high school he was taken in hand by E. L.
Yeo, Vancouver trainer, who trained him for
the inter-high school championship team
for two years. He came back in 1926 and won
the local high school sprint laurels for the
10-yard and 220-yard distances in this year.
In 1927 he set a new Canadian school record for the 100-yard distance in 10 seconds
flat. This year he concentrated on the 200yard distance, and set a new Canadian high
school mark of 22 seconds flat.
Bob Granger, track coach for the University of British Colombia, took Williams in
hand in 1926 and improved his style considerably. When it was proposed to send Williams to the Dominion championship meet
in 1927 funds were lacking, and it looked for a
time as if the Vancouver boy would miss his
chance to compete at Toronto. Finally Bob
Brown of the Vancouver Athletic Club advanced the funds, and it was under Brown’s
colors that Williams presented himself.
Arriving in Toronto a day before the meet,
Williams showed the effects of the journey
and change of climate. He finished second.
There were too many entries, and a coin was
18
tossed to see which of the qualifiers would
go into the final.
Williams lost. He returned to Vancouver,
and started in almost at once to train for
the trial events this year. Early this year he
showed greatly improved form. He won race
after race on the Coast, and extended his
fame beyond his home circles by equalling
the world mark for the 100-metre run of 10
3-5 seconds. This was at the Provincial Olympic trials in Vancouver. A fund was raised by
public subscription through a local newspaper to send Williams for the Dominion trials.
Bob Granger, Williams’s trainer, also had to
raise a fund to pay his way. Williams, in his
first Olympic race, equalled the world’s record of 10 3-5 seconds, and yesterday bested
the world’s best to win the 100-metre dash.
Title of “World’s Best
Sprinter” Earned
by Williams of Canada
oday will long be remembered by
Olympic officials and contestants,
as well as spectators. The great crowd that
witnessed Canada’s triumph in the 200
metres – the crowning of Percy Williams of
Vancouver as the champion at both 100 and
200 metres – has never been equalled in the
history of the Olympiads. Not since 1912,
when Ralph C. Craig of the United States
scored a double victory, has any runner won
two sprint titles at one Olympiad.
Watching the games from the beginning,
one was impressed by the Canadian schoolboy, slight of stature, with dark curly locks,
forging his way to the front from the elimination heats, through the second trials,
the semi-finals and the finals, disposing of
experienced trackmen of world fame.
est sprinter.
As the runners faced the starter in their
respective lanes Williams again looked boyish amongst the renowned competitors he
faced. John Fitzpatrick of Hamilton broke
away on the outside to set a hot pace. All
ran fairly equally until 25 yards from the
finish, with Williams holding himself an
easy fourth. The Vancouver boy put forward
unique energy and moved to second place
10 yards from the finish; a great burst of
speed carried him to breast the tape a decisive winner.
Rangly of Britain was second, it was declared after much consultation among the
judges. Williams had undoubtedly won, but
the allocation of places was no simple matter. Helmut Koernig of Germany and Jackson Scholz of the United States, the defending champion, tied for third, and Fitzpatrick,
placed fifth, with Jacob Schuller, Germany,
sixth and last.
Beats Brilliant Field
Today the climax was reached when Williams disposed of the second set of veteran runners in the 200 metres. Spectators
watching the youngster were amazed at the
hidden strength bursting forth at the critical
moment into unbeatable speed. This brilliant performer, who scarcely ever trained
intensively, who leads his coach a merry
dance, stands out alone as the world’s great-
Paddock Well Beaten
Williams’s time was 27 seconds flat. He won
his semi-final earlier in the day in the same
time, and in this semi-final Charley Paddock
of California, holder of the world’s record
for both the 100 and 200 metres, ran fourth
and never threatened. His records were set
in 1921 at 10 2-5 and 20 4-5.
As Williams slowed down the demonstration broke, and it was probably the widest
AMSTERDAM
T
19
that ever followed an Olympic victory, with
Britishers or all parts of the empire, Irishmen, South Africans, Australians, Scotsmen
and Englishmen, alike vying with jubilant
Canadians in expression of their exultation.
The Canadian, having proved himself one
of the greatest sprinters of all time, became
the prey of the photographers, who draped
a Canadian flag about his boyish form and
photographed him from all sides.
Picturesque Setting
The Canadian flag was raised to the top of
the main Olympic pole, and the smoke from
the traditional Olympiad fires drifted lazily
over the whole excited scene.
All other male Canadian runners today
were eliminated in the preliminaries of
long-distance races. Pete and Jack Walters
of Hamilton, Dave Griffin of Hamilton, and
A. Doherty of Montreal did their best in
the 1,500-metre trials, but the opposition
they faced in their respective heats was too
much for them. Pete Walters and Griffin got
fourths, Doherty a fifth and Jack Walters a
sixth place, but only the first two in each
heat qualified.
Art Keay of Toronto ran a gallant race in
the 3,000-metre steeplechase but trailed
the procession at the end. V. B. Callard of
Toronto and W. Kibblewhite of Winnipeg
withdrew from this event.
The qualifying of Jean Thompson of Penetang and Fanny Rosenfeld of Toronto for the
women’s 800-metre final tomorrow was the
most interesting angle of the games today
apart from the running of Williams and
Fitzpatrick.
Record Time Broken
Jean Thompson, who is only 17 years
of age, won her heat in 2 minutes 23 1-5
seconds, which beat the world record of
2.23 4-5. Even Miss Thompson’s mark was
surpassed, however, by Fraulein Dollinger
of Germany, who won her heat in 2.22 3-5.
Fanny Rosenfeld ran in this record-breaking
heat and was content to gain an easy third,
which assured her a place in the final.
Miss Thompson easily won her heat over
Florence Macdonald of the United States,
who was near exhaustion as she followed
the Canadian over the line, three yards behind.
Miss Thompson’s Victory
The Penetanguishene girl broke fast and
led the field, which strung out in Indian file,
by six yards along the first lap. The others
closed up gradually, but Miss Thompson
increased her speed to maintain a safe lead
in the second half. A final burst brought
Miss Macdonald to second place at the tape,
Fraulein Wever, Germany, was third. Fanny
Rosenfeld ran her heat in different fashion,
running third without overexerting herself,
though the winner of her heat was Fraulein
Dollinger, setting a world record, which beat
20
Miss Thompson’s. Mlle. Laudre of France
was second.
Jean Thompson is one of the most brilliant among the six Canadian girl athletes,
even if the youngest. She is a claimant for a
world’s record for her distance of 2.21 1-5.
Victor Picard of Hamilton tied for third
place in the pole vault, won by the great
Sabin Carr, but in the “jump-offs” placed
fourth. Carr vaulted 13 feet 9 6-16 inches, a
new Olympic record.
21
1936
Berlin
Invincible Owens
Scores Third Win
200-metres in 20.7 seconds, he clipped the
world standard for the distance, around one
turn, and shaved 4-10 second off the Olympic mark he set Tuesday. Monday he won
the 100-metre dash and yesterday it was the
broad jump. He is the first Olympian to turn
the “hat trick” since peerless Paavo Nurmi
did it in 1924.
Ken Carpenter, brawny Californian, tossed
the discus 185 feet 7 20/64 inches for a triumph that displaced the former Olympic
standard of 182 feet 4 ½ inches. Then Earle
Meadows, whose name might better be
“clouds,” soared 14 feet 2 15/16 inches to take
the pole vault medal. He beat the former
mark for the games by 1 1/16 inches.
Even the walkers took a hand in re-writing
the record book. Whitlock ankled over the
route of 31.050 miles in 4 hours 36 minutes
41.4 seconds. Tom Green, also of England,
set the previous mark of 4.50.10 in the 1932
Olympics.
ELMER DUNMAGE
CANADIAN PRESS STAFF WRITER
BERLIN
I
nvincible Jesse Owens set the stage for a
three-event sweep by the United States
in the Olympic track and field games today
as records continued to tumble in unprecedented numbers.
A tireless English pedestrian, Harold Whitlock, who strolled off with the 50-kilometre
walking title, was the only “outsider” to
break into the win column, as Owens roared
off with the 200-metre sprint, to become a
triple champion, and teammates won the
pole vault and discus throw.
Lean Lee Orr of Vancouver could do no
better than fifth as the great Jesse upset the
world record in the dash, but Dr. Phil Edwards raced into the blue ribbon 1,500-metre final and Betty (“Co-ed”) Taylor, also
of Hamilton, earned a spot in the women’s
50-metre hurdle final.
English Muller Beaten
Conclusion of trials for the metric mile, regarded generally as the premier race of the
games, found most of the favorites still in
the running. The survivors were blond Jack
Lorriock of New Zealand; defending champion Luigi Beccali of Italy, Glen Cunningham and Gene Venzke of the United States;
Canada’s faithful “old” Dr. Phil, and seven
others. The final, scheduled for tomorrow,
O’Connor in Semi-Finals
In addition, Larry O’Connor, a University of
Toronto timbre-topper, progressed into the
110-metre hurdle semi-finals, while Sylvanus
Apps of Hamilton and ten others tied for
sixth place in the pole vault.
Highlighting the day like a brilliant star
was Owens. As he hot-footed it over the
24
remains a distinct toss-up.
Stan Wooderson, bespectacled English star
who had been expected to do great things,
joined Jack Liddle of Winnipeg and Hugh
Thomson, Nanaimo, B.C., on the sidelines.
Wooderson, recent conqueror of the great
Lovelock, reportedly went to his mark with
an injured ankle. He hummed along well
enough until the turn into the homestretch,
where he faded and finished eighth. The
thin, red-headed Thomson could not stand
the pace set by France’s Bobby Goix, the
heat winner. In 3 minutes 54 seconds, and
the Canadian finished ninth behind Wooderson.
Liddle was a distant eighth in a trial taken
by Venzke in 4.00.4.
Dr. Edwards, point winner for Canada
with a third place in the 800-metres, was in
that same position in his 1,500-metre trial.
Beccali took the trial in 3.55.6. The Hungarian Szabo was next. Then came the negro
physician of Montreal, competing for the
Hamilton Olympic Club, in 3.56.2. Beccali’s
winning time at the Los Angeles games was
3.51.2.
Mrs. Taylor, 19-year-old student of McMaster University, progressed through two heats
to enter the 40-metre hurdle finals. She won
a morning test in 12 seconds while Mrs. Roxy
Atkins, Toronto, was being eliminated. The
Toronto star was bested out of third place
and a qualifying place by a scant foot.
In the afternoon semi-final, the pretty
Hamilton girl ran second to Trebisonda
Valla as the Italian signorina skimmed the
obstacles in the world record-equalling time
of 11.6 and clipped 1-10th second from Babe
Didrikson’s Olympic mark. Betty “Co-ed”
was caught in 11.7, the listed Olympic standard.
U.S. Negroes 1, 2 in 200 Metres
In the men’s hurdle event, Jim Worrall,
Toronto tall boy, ran third and out, while fellow citizen O’Connor was progressing. Leaping Larry was a close friend in a trial Lavery
of South Africa won in 15 seconds. O’Connor
was clocked in at 15.1. England’s Finlay won
in 14.7 that heat that marked the elimination of Worrall.
The dramatic 200-metre dash presented
the picture of two American negroes finishing like a doubleheader midnight express,
Matthew Robinson was about two metres
behind the rhythmic-running Owens at the
tape. Martin Osendarp of Holland was third
and Paul Haenni, Switzerland, fourth. Behind Lee Orr came Wijnand van Beveren in
sixth and last place.
The burly Robinson had served notice of
his class by winning a morning semi-final
in 21.1 seconds, equalling the then Olympic record. Orr was second. Canada’s other
sprinters, Bruce Humber, Victoria, and
Howie McPhee, Vancouver, were fifth and
25
sixth respectively in the other heat. Owens
took hat one in 21.3, slow time for the sepia
shooting star.
In the pole vault, young Apps cleared 13
feet 5-32 inches, in earn a spot in an elevenway jump off for sixth that will be staged
later. The Hamilton all-around athlete, best
known for his hockey exploits, failed when
his bar was raised to 13 feet 7 inches.
26
Scanning
the sport field (1)
Loaring Faces Gargantuan Task
Loaring, who skims over the hurdles as
though his name should start with an S,
qualified for the 400-metre semi-finals by
placing second in his preliminary heat. He
may reach the final, but the opposition is
of such a stellar nature that one would be
overoptimistic to regard him as a likely
point-scorer.
Howard McPhee made his exit from the
100-metre event when he failed to secure
better than fourth place in the semi-finals.
It was one of those blanket finishes, and,
though McPhee failed to justify predictions
that he would be a second Percy Williams,
he was far from discredited. Only 20 years of
age, he has a chance to improve.
In the girls’ events, dominated by Helen
Stephens, the three Canadian starters, Aileen Meagher, Jeanette Dolson and Hilda
Cameron, lacked the speed necessary to
earn points. Misses Meagher and Dolson
each finished second in preliminaries to
qualify for the semi-finals, in which each
took a fourth.
TOMMY MUNNS
SPORTS EDITOR OF THE GLOBE
S
uch cause for Canadian enthusiasm as
the Olympic track results of yesterday
provided were of a definitely restricted nature. Phil Edwards, a competitor in his third
set of Olympic Games, and the more youthful Johnny Loaring of Windsor provided the
only bright spots of the program, as far as
the Canadian contingent was concerned.
Edwards and Loaring were the only representatives of the Dominion at the Reich
Sports Field to escape the elimination bogey, while at Deutschland Hall the wrestles
were so puzzled by Olympic style that Vern
Pettigrew, Region 134-pounder, was the only
victor.
Apparently using his experience to rate
his pace so as to qualify without unduly extending himself, Edwards finished third, and
by so doing became eligible for the final tomorrow. His opposition in the ultimate heat
will include all three of the United States entrants Johnny Woodruff, “Chuck” Hornbostel, who was beaten by Edwards Sunday, and
Harry Williamson. Nine will face the starter,
and Edwards will be entitled to considerable
credit if he is one of first three to finish.
Rolling Falls Beat Canadian Wrestlers
While Pettigrew won his first bout in the
wrestling tournament, Terry Evans, regarded
as the ace of Canada’s mat team, and George
Chiga, Region heavyweight, were defeated.
That doesn’t mean that they are out of the
running, for the Olympic wrestling is not
27
conducted on an elimination basis. The man
who makes the best showing under a complicated scoring system wins each class upon
the completion of a round-robin series.
Rolling falls, the bugbear of Canadian
wrestlers in previous Olympic competitions,
were responsible for the losses sustained
by Evans and Chiga. In Canada the rules
provide that both shoulders must be on the
mat for at least three seconds before a fall
is counted, but under Olympic rules it is
enough that a man’s shoulders have been
forced to touch the mat momentarily. He
may be taking his opponent to the canvas,
but, rolling underneath to complete a manoeuver that will bring him to top position,
may lose under the regulations in force in
Berlin.
Such stellar Canadians as Cliff Chillcott,
Earl McCreedy and Danny Macdonald were
deprived of possible victories at previous
Olympic Games because of the rolling fall.
It is obvious that if Olympic success is to be
the goal of Canadian amateur grapplers the
rules must be changed in this country and
the men trained for four years to meet the
conditions which will confront them at the
Olympics.
If, however, the constant competition at
home is regarded as more valuable that a
tournament held every four years, there
is no need to alter the rules at present in
vogue in this country.
What Will Mussolini Say to This?
The “black menace” of the present games
looms more formidably than the teams of
many of competing nations.
Representatives of the colored race are
contributing greatly to the United States
points total, and appear sure to secure additional laurels. Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe finished in that order in the 100-metre
final, with the former equalling the world
mark after his claim for a new record Sunday has been disallowed because of a favoring wind.
Owens, seeking triple honors, faces the
200-metre sprint and the running broad
jump as favorite, while Johnny Woodruff, in
the 800-metre final, is another colored star.
This is indeed a dark era in track and field.
28
Scanning
the sport field (2)
100-metres. Cornellius Johnson and Dave
Albritton, two more of the U.S. colored
group, finished first and second in the high
jump, and Johnny Woodruff, another dark
darter, was the victor in the 800-metre run.
Yesterday Matthew Robinson, also of deepdyed pigment, was second to Owens in the
200-metre final.
TOMMY MUNNS
SPORTS EDITOR OF THE GLOBE)
L
ook at the Boys of the Black Brigade!
And the Olympic Games go on! Mr.
Average Citizen in Germany must be wondering if the North American Continent is
a second Africa as he sits in the stand and
sees one colored man after another flash to
the forefront with the United States crest
on his jersey, to say nothing of Phil Edwards
and Sammy Richardson, bearing the Maple
Leaf.
The Black Brigade members have scored a
majority of the United States’ fast-mounting
total, and the Germans by now must be under the impression that there is but a small
sprinkling of whites in Uncle Sam’s domain.
The Aryans, if they are curious-minded, will
be returning home to peruse those pages of
their geographies which refer to the population of the nations.
Look over the list! Jesse Owens, chiefof-staff of the Dark Army, accomplished
his ambitions of a triple triumph when he
added first place in the 200-metre dash to
his 100-metre and broad jump wins. He
certainly is on the gold standard, as far as
Olympic medals are concerned.
Ralph Metcalfe ran second to him in the
Other Black and Tans Ready to Star
Repetition of what has been said before is
contained above. But wait, that’s not all.
There are other black and tans in reserve,
and they may be heard from soon. Archie
Williams is first-string man and Jimmy
Luvalle second in the United States entries
for the 400-metre race. And Canada’s Phil
Edwards and Sammy Richardson will reappear on the scene today in the 1,500-metre
final and running hop, step and jump, respectively.
Owens, three times a winner, might have
had what might be called 3¼ Olympic victories had his own wishes been followed.
He wanted to join the U.S. 400-metre relay
team, but Head Coach Lawson Robertson
ruled that Owens had “had enough glory.”
Well, he earned it, didn’t he?
29
1972
Munich
For Canadian athletes,
it was unreal
an Arab guerrilla attack on the Israeli team
quarters with anger and dismay. Within
hours, the news was known by all.
People stopped smiling and laughing.
They wandered aimlessly about Olympic
Park encountering soldiers with sub-machine guns slung over their shoulders or
with exposed pistols on their hips.
A wire fence that encircled the Olympic
village was the focal point at the entrance to
Connollystrasse. Less than 100 yards away a
drama was unfolding as Arab terrorists held
nine Israeli athletes.
In the midst of the confusion, rumours
and milling crowd, which swelled to several
thousand as hours dragged by, ice cream
was doing a brisk business.
The hills that encircle the village were covered with curious but silent people, drinking beer and eating sandwiches. Armed
troops were called in to keep the crowds
back and the ground was littered with empty beer cups and waste paper.
The hills formed an amphitheatre for
newsmen, who were permitted inside the
outer police cordons but away from the
fences. Only policemen and blue-clad security men were permitted to enter.
A lively demonstration by Israelis carrying signs which read “Stop the Games” and
“Sport, Not Murder” in the afternoon excited many elements in the crowd.
The Canadian Headquarters in the Olym-
LOUIS CAUZ
MUNICH
S
everal members of Canada’s equestrian team were leaving their rooms
about 5:45 a.m. yesterday when suddenly
they were confronted by an excited, bearded
man waving a gun in their faces.
“The man kept yelling, ‘Go back, go back,
danger,’ at us.” Jim Elder, one of the team,
said. “We didn’t know who he was, but we
didn’t hang around long to find out.”
The Canadians were among the first athletes at the Olympic Games to realize something unusual was occurring. Team coach
Tom Gaylord said they had little time to
wonder about it.
“We saw a man in a turtleneck shirt carrying a pistol slinking along the wall. A plainclothes policeman with a sub-machine gun
signalled us to follow him, and we got out,
ducking from pillar to pillar like some kind
of spy movie.
“They made sure we really sprinted when
we came to any open court-yards. I understand they dragged the body away just 20
minutes earlier.”
Others in the group were riders Ian Millar,
Torchy Millar, and Jim Day. It was the beginning of the most bizarre and tragic day in
the history of the Olympic Games, a day that
left the festive city with a long face.
Canadian athletes, like those of other
countries, mostly reacted to the news of
32
pic Village was taken over as a sort of command post by security forces who kept
watch over the Israeli building.
The Canadian building is about 40 yards
from the Israeli headquarters and commands an excellent view of the scene of
violence.
German police and army units took over
the top floor of the three story building.
The Canadian headquarters staff and male
athletes, who earlier had been sent out, returned to their living quarters. There was no
problem with the women athletes who were
in another section of the village.
Both the women and men were able to get
back to the dining room for meals and get in
and out of the village.
The area was surrounded by armed police
and security guards wearing bullet-proof
vests.
Cameramen with immense lenses stood
in trees, ladders or on hastily erected platforms as they probed the area in front of the
grey, three-story building.
Whenever there was any movement cameras began clicking and shouting erupted.
Life outside the fence as well as in the cordoned-off compound of the Canadian team
was hectic but there were light moments.
Three Canadians in their red and white
jogging outfits tossed a football back and
forth close to the area where soldiers with
bullet-proof vests, helmets and machine
guns were patrolling.
They were warned to keep their passes
and fumbled out of the restricted area,
which is less than 100 yards away from the
Canadian team headquarters and living
quarters for 225 male athletes and officials.
Other Canadians sunbathed, read books
and relaxed or danced at the village discotheque. Some were missing as they went
on trips to Austria and around the German
countryside or went downtown to sightsee
and shop as yesterday was supposed to be a
quiet day with few events on the schedule.
It was anything but quiet as athletes and
officials had difficulty getting in and out of
the village. Depending on the hour of the
day and the mood of the armed trooper
checking credentials, the entrances and exits often were sealed.
Ingenuity got some out as they scrambled
over the fence or crawled underneath.
For much of the morning and afternoon
four members of Canada’s medical staff
peeked out of the windows. From their offices they could see the draped windows
where the hostages were held.
The four are team physician Dr. John Kennedy of London, nurse Francoise Colette of
Montreal, George Morrriset of Quebec City, a
physiotherapist, and Dr. Max Afron of Winnipeg.
For much of the day they and transport
manager Ken Murray were the only ones in
33
the smaller mission offices. The remainder
of the officials and athletes were ordered to
evacuate the building during the tense early
hours of the drama.
Athletes were warned to stay out of open
areas in case a guerilla took a shot at them.
They were told to use back alleys, tunnels
and underground passages to make their
exits.
Denis Whitaker, equestrian team manager, said that when he came out of his
room for a morning run, “I came around
the corner and a fellow with a .38 automatic
Browning jumped out in front of me. I
thought he was just some kind of hopped
up kook, so I turned around and walked
back to my room.
“It’s a terrible thing that a handful of
scum like these Arabs can terrorize the entire village and destroy the games.”
Two walkers whose competitions are over,
said they eagerly wished to return to Canada. They were Alex Oakley of Oshawa and
Karl Merschenz, who was born in Berlin.
“The Olympic Games have become ridiculous,” Merschenz said. “It is no longer athlete against athlete. It is nation against nation, black against white, east against west.
Beat the Russians. Beat the Americans.
“We’ve got to put the flags away and stop
playing the anthems. Joe Smith is the winner, not Joe Smith of the United States.
“The Games have become strictly a politi-
cal issue. There’s always somebody passing around petitions. The Sudanese passed
around one condemning the suppression in
their country.”
Harold Wright, president of the Canadian
Olympic Association did not think that the
suggestion to cancel the remaining events
in the games was a good one.
“Life goes on. Your best friend dies and
you give your respects. But life continues.
We all feel bad about this. But I think the
game should continue.”
The decision to call off last night’s events
affected only one Canadian athlete, heavyweight boxer Carroll Morgan of Antigonish,
N.S.
Morgan, who won his first bout, was supposed to have fought Hasse Thomsin of
Sweden. If he wins it, he’ll collect a bronze
medal whether he wins or loses his quarterfinal match. Morgan is recovering from a
badly bruised hand and the extra day off
will help him.
34
1976
Montreal
Games are disrupted as
28 nations pull out
this year’s Games.
(Despite reports that the IOC might invoke sanctions against the protestors at a
meeting today, The New York Times says
it has learned that no such action will be
taken. Top IOC officials feel that disciplinary
measures at this time would only aggravate
what they consider a “very emotional” situation, the newspaper says.
(On the other hand, the IOC is not expected
to try to arrange a reconciliation since it regards the dispute as being beyond its jurisdiction. “It’s very sad” said Willie Daume
of West Germany, first vice-president of the
IOC, “but we will not do much at this moment. And we have no intention of booting
New Zealand out.”)
On Friday, the IOC flatly turned down a
request by 16 African countries to expel New
Zealand, saying that rugby is not an Olympic sport and as such the IOC can’t do anything about it.
Any hopes Canadians may have had that
the Games of the 21st Olympiad could be
held without any further political fuss after
last week’s crisis over Taiwan were dashed
yesterday with the decision by the African
nations to pull out.
The Games Organizing Committee, COJO,
has received official notification of departure from seven countries so far: Kenya, 76
athletes; Nigeria, 74; Ghana, 71; Ethiopia, 46;
Zambia, 43; Chad, 11; Congo, 8.
RICHARD CLEROUX
GLOBE AND MAIL REPORTER
MONTREAL
M
ost of the continent of Africa pulled
out of the Olympic Games yesterday
followed by at least two Arab and Caribbean
countries, threatening the future of the
Olympic movement and throwing the organization of this year’s Games into confusion.
It is the most dramatic exodus on political
grounds since the modern Olympics began
in 1896.
So far, 28 countries have pulled out, taking with them about 720 athletes, roughly 10
per cent of the participants.
During the past three days 20 African
nations have pulled out. They were joined
yesterday by Iraq and Guyana amid reports
that more Arab and Caribbean countries
will follow today.
The Egyptian team was ordered to pull
out last night and returned home immediately. The Middle Eastern News Agency
said the order emphasized the “importance
of African solidarity in the face of racial
discrimination…and for the realization of
justice and equality.”
Those pulling out are protesting against
the refusal by the International Olympic
Committee to censure or expel New Zealand
because a New Zealand rugby team is touring South Africa, which has been expelled
from the IOC and is not fielding a team at
37
COJO doesn’t count Tanzania which announced last Friday it wouldn’t send its 18
athletes, nor Mauritius and its three athletes, nor Somalia and its 14, because none
of them ever showed up.
A COJO spokesman confirmed yesterday
that seven more countries have “verbally
advised” COJO that letters of withdrawal are
on the way: Algeria, Cameroon, Iraq, Libya,
Niger, Uganda and Togo.
Other countries that haven’t yet sent
letters to COJO but are packing their bags
include Gambia, 4; Sudan, 42; Upper Volta,
12; Central African Republic, 12; Guyana, 27;
Gabon, 12; Malagasy Republic, 11.
Others, such as Malawi, may not take part
in the Games. Syrian and Jordanian delegations that were in touch with their governments yesterday were contemplating leaving after Iraq’s departure.
Meanwhile, Lord Killanin was in Kingston
enjoying the sun and the water at the opening of the yachting events. COJO president
Roger Rousseau was attending a reception
with the Queen.
Athletes from 96 nations, disregarding
the fact that other nations were balking for
political reasons, marched together in Saturday’s stirring opening ceremonies.
Queen Elizabeth, resplendent in a salmon
pink dress and matching hat, stood for the
duration of the march-in and after brief
speeches from Lord Killanin and Mr. Rous-
seau, declared the Games open.
The largest cheer of the afternoon was reserved for the Canadian delegation. Canada,
474 strong, came in at the end, behind standard bearer Abby Hoffman of Toronto.
The red-and-white-clad athletes were
greeted with a standing ovation that rocked
the stadium and brought tears of pride and
national unity to the eyes of many of the
70,000 who watched the proceedings.
The second largest ovation of the day
came when Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau
took the Olympic flag from Lord Killanin
and from the Mayor of Munich, site of the
1972 Olympics. East German Uwe Potteck
won the first gold medal yesterday, scoring
573 of a possible 600 points in the free pistol
event of the shooting competition.
Canada’s first medal was a bronze in the
400-metre women’s medley swimming relay. The gold was won by East Germany and
the silver by the United States.
The Games timetables have been thrown
into confusion by all the departures. Six of
the 15 boxing matches were cancelled yesterday and nine of the 24 soccer matches.
38
Games end in moving
surge of goodwill
brief speech, the throngs took up a chant,
“Drapeau! Drapeau!”
The mayor, much ignored since the Quebec Government took over the running of
the runaway costs, made no speech, but
when the ceremony had ended, he walked
down from the VIP box with Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa, COJO CommissionerGeneral Roger Rosseau and Prime Minister
Pierre Trudeau to shake hands with the
athletes. They also linked hands and raised
them, as in triumph.
The overwhelming goodwill of the youth
on the field during the closing showed optimism which for the moment masked the
ugliness of politicking.
Vancouver high-jumper Greg Joy, a silver medal-winner on Saturday, carried the
Canadian flag in an Indian-led procession
of nations. The flags of Greece, the country of Olympics’ origin, Canada and Russia
were raised and anthems played. O! Canada
never sounded better, and applause of some
long-lost national pride thundered around
the partly covered stadium for minutes
afterwards.
The giant scoreboard screens at each
end of the stadium showed the extinguishing of the Olympic flames in Montreal and
the lighting of a flame in Moscow. Scenes
and music from the next host nation were
flashed on the boards.
A streaker invaded the field at the begin-
JAMES CHRISTIE
GLOBE AND MAIL REPORTER
MONTREAL
T
he Games of the 21st Olympiad came
to a moving, spectacular close last
night with a cry for the peace and harmony
that never quite made it to Montreal.
Colors swam in a dazzling swirl of spotlight. The absorbing music of the late Andre
Mathieu and Vic Vogel swelled like a wave
washing over the 75,000 who packed the
stadium. Canadian Indians led files of dancing athletes and Olympic workers hand-inhand in a chain that snaked across the field
and around five giant teepees set in the pattern and color of the Olympic rings.
Six Canadian athletes circled the field
with their own version of the Olympic flag.
Painted on the white bedsheet were the five
Olympic rings. Over them was a large peace
sign.
Lord Killanin, president of the International Olympic Committee, who navigated
the Games through protests, threats and
withdrawals, twice changed the text of his
closing speech. Once, he called for the 1980
Games in Moscow to take place in a spirit
“of justice, unity and sportsmanship, free
from all persuasions.”
The other change was to mention the
believing little man who set the Montreal
Games in motion six years ago, Mayor Jean
Drapeau. As Lord Killanin finished his
39
ning of the ceremonies and cavorted in
the centre of a ring of young dancing girls,
barely seen by the police because he was
hidden behind their capes. After several
minutes, he was cavorting inside a ring of
six Montreal policemen.
Long-time workings of COJO, the Olympic
organizing committee, burst into tears as
the finality of the occasion and the unemployment hit them at the same time.
A couple of athletes who had found no
privacy in the Olympic Village ducked into
the giant teepees at midfield. Corn roasts,
all-night parties and illegal parking were the
order of the night.
Today, the Olympic hangover sets in. The
tight security of these Olympics certainly
averted any act of political terrorism which
ruined the Munich Olympics in 1972. However, politics on a larger scale threatened
to sunder the Montreal Games or end the
Olympic movement.
There were cries of racism against New
Zealand for its friendly sports relations with
apartheid South Africa, Most of the African
and Arab nations withdrew because of that.
There were threats by the United States
to withdraw if Taiwan, not recognized by
Canada, were not allowed to compete in the
Games as the Republic of China.
There were threats by the Russian delegation to boycott the closing ceremony unless
“kidnapped” teen-age diving-star Sergei
Nemtsanov was returned by Canadian immigration officials.
The Olympic Games, their high ideals of
competition and amateurism damaged,
came through this one gasping. Where they
go from here, or if they go at all beyond 1980
remains in question.
The Lord of Games, Michael Morris
Killanin, starts answering those questions at
a press conference this morning.
40
1980
Moscow
The Olympics:
Say nyet to Moscow
or remove them from Moscow. So would
Margaret Thatcher, the iron-panted Prime
Minister of Britain. Joe Clark, taking his cue,
chimed in Me, too.
All are aware that boycotting the Games
or abolishing them would be the easiest
expression of contempt for the Kremlin
despots. It is harder to renounce trade obligations; treaties and contracts are more
difficult to rupture; diplomats who must
deal with the Russians across a wide variety
of sensitive world agreements cannot necessarily make flat, irrevocable decisions.
Not one thing, however, prevents athletes
of the so-called free world from saying No to
the Moscow Olympics.
One prominent Canadian performer has
uttered support for a boycott, although not
on political grounds. Gordon Singleton, a
cyclist from Niagara Falls, has said, Russia
and other Communist countries claim to
be amateur, but they’re really pros the way
they develop athletes. They should have
their own Olympics and we should have
ours.
No other elitist among our lucky international vagabonds seems able to distinguish
between politics and human rights.
Not one of them seems to possess sufficient decency to say, Hey, what the Russians
did in Afghanistan, and in Hungary and
Czechoslovakia in other Olympic years, is
deplorable. How can we go to Moscow and
DICK BEDDOES
TORONTO ON
M
r. Beddoes is a Globe and Mail columnist who has covered the sports scene
for years. The aging playground directors
who conduct the quadrennial muscle dance
known as the Olympic Games are sealed off
in a dream world, appallingly unaware of
the realities of life and death.
This week, on the Jock Talk section of As
It Happens on CBC radio, the Canadian delegate to the International Olympic Committee deflected any notion of transferring this
summer’s Games from downtown Russia.
James Worrall said, There shouldn’t be
any change in the Olympic schedule, unless
there is a real shooting war.
Mr. Worrall may be representative of the
self-appointed, self-perpetuating stuffed
sports shirts who run the Olympics. They
are not evil men. Their shocking lack of
awareness can’t be due to callousness. They
are simply walled off in a dream existence.
If what the Russians did to the outgunned
resisters in Afghanistan wasn’t a real shooting war, what was it? An unreal shooting
war? U.S. President Jimmy Carter, coming
from behind himself on the bloodiness of
Soviet tyranny, would boycott the Games
43
play with them as though a little bloodshed
mustn’t be allowed to interrupt the Games?
Don’t bring sports into politics is the sorry
whine of international sportsmen, as
though sport has priority over our national
self-respect.
They have it all backward, unless sport is
more important than reality.
Don’t bring sport into politics? There are
no sillier propositions. It is similar to saying
keep politics out of Palestine; keep sleeping out of the Senate; keep mediocrity out
of Maple Leaf Gardens. Just try. Conflict is
symbolized by the spectacle of apolitical
athletes leaping and heaving in arenas.
It is warped concept, that Polyanna piffle
about sporting encounters healing ideological differences. Such a notion is preposterous when it is apparent that such encounters are manipulated to magnify national
differences and exploit tensions.
Why, otherwise, do Olympic teams parade
under national flags and carry off a charade
based on misguided patriotism? Inevitable
patriotic headlines pollute the sports pages.
Ruritania wins 100 metres. Upper Zab victorious in three-legged race.
Splendid for them, but neither Ruritania
nor Upper Zab had anything to do with it. It
was Mr. Geewhiz or Miss Whatchamacallit,
and the reason why the Russians, Germans
and Americans win most of the Olympic
trinkets is because they are rich enough
or numerous enough to develop a caste of
physical specialists, or absolutists, who do
nothing save run up and down and throw
hardware.
In the Soviet Union, propaganda about
the sprawling dictatorship’s athletic
achievements has boomed since the 1952
Helsinki Olympics, the first in which Russian mercenaries participated. Now the
boom is approaching a climactic crescendo.
Moscow propagandists expect to dazzle
the world by having Soviet Hessians win every event on the program from the two-foot
dash to hurling the trolley-car.
Each Soviet winner will be awarded the
Order of Gorki (Keep Smiling), the Order
of Raskolinkov (Keep Off the Grass), and a
bottle of vodka formerly belonging to Bolshoi ballerina who defected.
Politics has mottled the modern Olympics
at least since 1936, when the late A. Hitler
used the Summer Games in Berlin as an excuse to advertise Aryan supremacy in what
Churchill called the most malignant racism
ever to corrode the human breast.
Since then, these global barbecues have
become irresistible attractions as forums for
ideological, social or racial expression. For
that reason, they have outgrown whatever
dubious use they may have had.
Remember 1968, in Mexico City? There
never has been an accurate census of the
number of students slaughtered by Mexi-
44
can police for protesting the promotion of a
sweaty carnival in an impoverished country
bereft of material dignity.
Remember 1972, in Munich? Palestinian
terrorists invaded the housing complex
where athletes were bivouacked and shot
their way into the Israeli quarters.
Eleven Israelis were killed in the savage attack, but Olympic officials refused to cancel
the remaning events, obscene as the continued activity was.
The late Avery Brundage, responsible for
the Munich rigadoon, regarded Arab-Israeli
warfare, hijacking, kidnapping and killing
as partisan politics not to be tolerated in the
Olympics.
And anyway, the bitter joke went in Munich, the Arabs were professional killers.
Brundage, as the high priest of amateurism,
doesn’t recognize them.
Remember 1976, in Montreal? The Olympic village was an armed camp, lest there be
a rerun of Munich.
Africans and other blacks boycotted the
Montreal Games because New Zealand, zealous in collaboration with athletic racists in
South Africa, was allowed to compete.
Politics aside, the reality of the Olympics
is mean-spirited on an athletic basis. There
admittedly is, on the surface, headlong human action that is exciting, even inspiring,
but the explosive effort hardly obscures the
anti-athletic phenomena.
The Olympics demand a grotesque development of physique in events such as
weightlifting. A shotputter, graceful as a
lumpy rhino loaded with lumbago, would
have difficulty walking a block, let alone
running it.
There is a universal commitment to dreary training which corrupts the very nature
of sport, as that abused word is properly
defined: a playful trifling; a diversion, recreation; a pleasant pastime.
There is little that is pleasant about the
common Olympic-athlete schedule of practicing six or seven hours a day at one boring
event. There is nothing elevating about the
preoccupation with winning which makes
athletes antagonistic toward their fellow
competitors.
Olympic antagonism extends from hockey
players clubbing each other over the head to
water polo players kneeing each other in the
groin and grabing the genitals.
There is the dictatorial relationship between coach and athlete which destroys fun.
Japanese girl volleyball teams of Olympic
calibre, for example, are admired for the
autocratic fashion of their coaches, who
maintain discipline by making erring players weep with humiliation in workouts. The
coaches accomplish the desired abasement
by instructing other girls to drill volleyballs
at anyone who fails to perform correctly.
Founders of the Olympics, the old Greeks,
45
Carter tells U.S.
athletes to stay home
were no more enlightened. The Olympics
were based on war skills - spear-throwing,
running, sword-fighting, hand-to-hand combat, clubbing - the sort of techniques the
Russians showed themselves to have perfected in Afghanistan.
Indeed, the Olympic Games of Plato and
Aristotle reflected the bellicose roots of
Western culture. Society tended to be ordered, as it is today, along the lines of antagonistic contest for personal status - drama
festivals and philosophical debate as well as
dirty politics and imperialism.
The Olympics themselves were representative of an ignoble cultural pattern - they
were staged in honor of Zeus, the absolute
power whose single principle in life was to
beat somebody else.
Past performances suggest the Olympics have rolled a full bloody circle. Baron
Pierre de Coubertin, an idealistic French
sportsman, resurrected the Games in 1896.
He revived only what the Roman emperor
Theodosius abolished in 392 A.D.
The Olympics, Theodosius declared, have
become a public nuisance.
FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AND REUTER NEWS AGENCY
KABUL
T
he Soviet Union ignored the Wednesday deadline set by U.S. President
Jimmy Carter to withdraw its 100,000
troops from Afghanistan.
Western diplomats in the Afghan capital
speculated the Kremlin may be forced to
send additional men into Afghanistan to
fight Moslem tribesmen.
Mr. Carter said Jan. 20 he would support
a boycott of the Summer Olympic Games
scheduled for Moscow if the Kremlin did
not withdraw its troops in a month, and a
month later, yesterday, a U.S. State Department spokesman said: “The United States
will not participate in the Olympics in Moscow.’’ A White House spokesmen said Mr.
Carter formally advised the U.S. Olympic
Committee that a U.S. team should not be
sent to Moscow.
Mr. Carter asked the committee to take
prompt action to put the boycott into effect.
(A decision on Canadian participation in
the Moscow Olympics has been delayed until Liberal Leader Pierre Trudeau takes over
as prime minister next week.) In Moscow,
the deadline passed without comment. The
official Soviet news media have charged the
United States with trying to blackmail the
46
Soviet Union, but have never reported the
deadline imposed by Mr. Carter - or its link
to U.S. participation in the Summer Olympics.
Some Western diplomats in Kabul believe
the Soviets and the Soviet-backed Afghan
Government will not be able to put down
a 21-month rebellion by Moslem guerrillas
without reinforcements being sent from the
Soviet Union. “There must be some military
experts in the Kremlin advising the Politburo at this very moment that only 200,000
more men would enable them to see the
light at the end of the tunnel,’’ one of the
Western diplomats said.
A diplomat from a non-aligned country
said: “The Russians are in a trap. They cannot retreat without losing face and they
cannot go forward without getting more
and more embroiled in an inextricable situation.’’ The Soviets have intervened against
mutinous Afghan army units, but they seem
reluctant to deploy their infantry against
the guerrillas.
Despite the Soviet troop presence in Afghanistan, the guerrillas are believed in virtual control of the main supply route from
Pakistan, attacking civilian traffic at will
and outwitting Afghan army soldiers sent to
“pacify’’ the area.
The Afghan army, estimated at 100,000
men before the Soviet intervention in late
December, is believed to have been cut in
half through desertions, purges and guerrilla action.
The Afghanistan situation figured prominently in talks yesterday in Bonn between
U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and West
German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. Mr.
Vance called his talks with Mr. Schmidt “extremely useful’’ but he later acknowledged
West Germany is not backing Mr. Carter’s
Olympic boycott.
In Washington, a State Department
spokesman said the United States is “in general agreement’’ with a European Economic
Community proposal of an international
guarantee of Afghanistan’s neutrality in exchange for removal of Soviet troops.
The first official Soviet response to the
idea was negative. The Soviet Government
newspaper Izvestia said “the illogicality
of such a proposal is obvious.’’ The plan
was set forth Tuesday during a meeting in
Rome of the foreign ministers of the nine
EEC countries, and Italian Foreign Minister
Attilio Ruffini, who was chairman of that
meeting, briefed Mr. Vance yesterday.
47
the actions of the USSR in Afghanistan.” He
added that Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau
took a personal initiative in the process by
“writing a number of world leaders on the
subject.” The final deadline for acceptance
of invitations to the Olympics is May 24 and
although Mr. MacGuigan said it seemed unlikely that there would be any change in the
situation in Afghanistan by that date “the
possibility cannot be entirely excluded” and
the Government would be prepared to reassess its decision.
Mr. MacGuigan said the Government does
not intend to use coercion with either individual athletes or the Canadian Olympic
Association to enforce the boycott by revoking passports or circumscribing “the right
of Canadians to travel freely abroad. But if
Canadian athletes participate in Moscow
they will do so without the moral and financial support of the Government of Canada.”
The Government, he said, would support
properly organized alternative international
sporting competitions as a way of compensating athletes for not having the chance of
going to Moscow.
Former Conservative external affairs minister Flora MacDonald said her party was
pleased the Government had finally decided
to go along with a decision made three
months earlier by the previous government.
However, she said, the Government’s long
delay and indecision had “confounded”
Canada joins in boycott
of Moscow Olympics
JOHN FRASER
O T TAWA
T
he Liberal Government has finally
decided to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics in retaliation for the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan four
months ago, although it will not try to deter
individual Canadian athletes who may be
determined to compete on their own.
The long-awaited announcement of the
Government’s stand on the growing international movement to boycott this year’s
Olympics was made in the House of Commons yesterday by External Affairs Minister
Mark MacGuigan. He said that the Soviet action in Afghanistan makes it “wholly inappropriate” to hold the Games in Moscow.
Mr. MacGuigan reaffirmed the measures
taken by the previous Conservative administration last January in cancelling visits of
ministers and high-level officials to the Soviet Union as well as halting “a wide range of
exchanges in education, culture and sport,
along with a wide variety of exports of manufactured goods and agricultural products.”
The Liberal Government, Mr. MacGuigan
said, wanted to canvass international opinion fully “to determine whether a boycott
of the Olympics would be an effective instrument in displaying our abhorrence of
48
Canada’s foreign allies and confused its
friends abroad.
Miss MacDonald disputed Mr. MacGuigan’s claims that it was necessary to
consult other countries on the matter. “If
he had bothered to look at the Telexes on
his desk, he would have known precisely
how many countries - including Third World
countries - had already decided to join the
boycott.” The New Democrats’ spokesman
for foreign affairs, Pauline Jewett, said that
her party continued to oppose the idea of
a boycott as a way of punishing the Soviet
Union.
She said a boycott puts the onus of Canada’s response to the USSR on “our athletes”
while the crippling of the Olympics this year
may well end the Olympic movement. She
also said the action may further escalate
East-West tensions, something that would
jeopardize future arms control and disarmament negotiations.
A more effective response, she said, would
be to end all bilateral relations with and
sever lines of credit to the Soviet Union in a
co-ordinated plan with other countries.
49
1984
Los Angeles
Soviets withdraw
from Olympics,
cite lack of security
seemed designed to embarrass the United
States and the LAOOC. It came only about
an hour after runners bearing the Olympic torch took off from the United Nations
building in New York.
It was not known immediately whether
other Eastern bloc nations would follow
the Soviet lead, although in recent weeks
the Olympic committees of Soviet satellites
have been echoing Moscow’s sentiments
about the alleged failure of the United States
to uphold the Olympic Charter.
The Polish Olympic Committee said its
participation was “under a question mark.”
Romania said it would attend, but Hungary
said it would wait at least 18 hours to decide.
Bulgaria refused comment, but Yugoslav
sports officials said the Soviet action would
not influence their participation.
Marat Gramov, head of the Soviet Olympic
Committee, denied that the Soviet move
was made in revenge for the 1980 boycott of
the Moscow Olympic Games by the United
States and most other Western nations.
In Washington, a White House spokesman
called the Soviet decision “totally unjustified.” Deputy press secretary Larry Speakes
flatly denied the Soviet allegations that the
United States is unable to provide necessary
security measures for the Soviet athletes.
“The decision by the Soviet Union means
that they have disregarded the feelings of
most of the people in the world that the
JAMES CHRISTIE
s the Olympic flame began its journey across the United States to Los
Angeles yesterday, the spirit of the Games it
represents was doused by the refusal of the
Soviet Union to attend the 1984 Olympics.
Citing a failure of organizers and the
host country to provide adequate security
measures, the Soviet Olympic Committee shocked the sports world by issuing a
statement critical of the U.S. failure to stop
planned protests against its participation in
the Games. “Chauvinistic sentiments and an
anti-Soviet hysteria are being whipped up in
the country. . . . Extremist organizations and
groupings of all sorts, openly aiming to create ‘unbearable conditions’ for the stay of the
Soviet delegation and performance by Soviet
athletes, have stepped up their activity with
the connivance of the American authorities.”
Protest groups such as the Ban, the Soviets
Coalition, and the Baltic American Freedom
League, have said in recent weeks that they
had infiltrated the Los Angeles Olympic
Organizing Committee and were prepared
to encourage and aid members of the Soviet
delegation to defect. Yesterday, those groups
took credit for the Soviet withdrawal.
The timing of the Soviet announcement
A
52
Olympics will be conducted in a non-political
atmosphere,” Mr. Speakes said. “We have
made extraordinary efforts to meet Soviet
concerns about arrangements in Los Angeles.” Mr. Speakes said this included docking
rights for a Soviet ship at the Games and
landing rights for Aeroflot, the Soviet airline.
Asked how the Soviet decision to stay
away differed from the U.S. 1980 boycott,
U.S. State Department spokesman John
Hughes said, “The difference is something
called Afghanistan. The reason the United
States stayed away was the extraordinary
brutality shown by the Soviets in Afghanistan. There is no comparable action by the
United States here.” Mr. Hughes said that the
only unresolved issue between the Soviet
and U.S. Olympic officials had been the denial of a visa to sport attache Oleg Yermishkin. The State Department had identified
Mr. Yermishkin as a member of the KGB and
said the Soviets would have to nominate
another man.
Yesterday’s statement, issued through
the official Soviet news agency, Tass, made
it clear that the Soviet action was aimed at
the Reagan Administration, not at the U.S.
athletes or public. “We have not the slightest wish to cast aspersions on the American
public, to cloud the good feelings of sportsmen linking our countries,” the statement
said. “Not to withdraw would be tantamount to approving the anti-Olympian ac-
tions of the U.S. authorities and organizers
of the Games.” James Worrall, a member of
the International Olympic Committee in
Canada, warned of the fragility of the Olympic movement. “This is a serious blow to the
Games in Los Angeles and to the Olympic
movement in general,” Mr. Worrall said in
Toronto. “Heaven only knows how far it will
spread. It appears more and more that the
Olympic Games will be used for political
statements. It’s a real tragedy.
Other Canadian officials and athletes say
the Soviet decision to stay away was influenced as much by their fear of being beaten
as by the desire to make a political statement. “They are looking at being outclassed
by the East Germans, Americans and Chinese
at the Summer Games,” said Eric Morse,
head of international sports relations for the
Department of External Affairs. “That could
be an ingredient in their decision, but I also
think there was a genuine fear, whether justified or not, among the Soviets about what
they found to be insufficient protection.” Lee
Crowell, executive director of the Canadian
Olympic Association, was taken by surprise.
“I didn’t think the Soviets would be able to
pass these Games up,” Mr. Crowell said from
Montreal. “They could have made a point to
the world. It may be a pressure tactic to get
the U.S. to relax its visa policy. They still have
enough time to change, again.” The deadline
for entry is June 2.
53
Boycott of L.A. Games may
benefit Canadians
take place until after the June 2 deadline for
entry into the Olympics. Canadian athletes
will then be evaluated as to their possibility
of placing well among countries officially
entered. “I don’t care if the Americans decide to boycott their own Games and stay in
Colorado Springs,” Lynch said. “We’re interested in placing in the top half of nations
that will be in Los Angeles.” Lynch rejects
the idea that any medals won by Canadians
in such circumstances will be meaningless.
“No one’s going to tell me that Allan Wells
and Sebastian Coe have tarnished medals
because they were won in Moscow when
we weren’t there. They are still the Olympic
champions.” If the boycott spreads to include the rest of Eastern Europe plus Cuba,
which has close ties with the Soviet Union,
Canadians will come home with more medals in their duffle bags than at any previous
will that will provide the best spinoff for Canadian sport at the grass-roots level, drawing youngsters to areas where success has
been demonstrated. “Italy experienced this
same thing after the 1980 Western boycott,”
said Joseph Rabel, executive director of the
Ontario Amateur Wrestling Association.
“The head of Italian wrestling told me that
they had one gold medal at the so-called
diluted Olympics. The impact on the growth
of his sport was phenomenal.” “Two things
are needed for sport to develop - youngsters
need the opportunity to compete with peers
JAMES CHRISTIE
he Soviet Union and its Eastern-bloc
comrades may have just done more
to promote Canadian sport than all the federal Government’s millions spent since 1967.
With East Germany yesterday joining the
Soviet Union and Bulgaria on the sidelines
for the Los Angeles Olympics, Canada will
probably send one of its largest teams, as
allowed by Canadian Olympic Association
standards. “The criterion by which we will
stand states that we will send athletes who
have a reasonable chance of placing in the
top 16 or in the top half of the field in the
Olympic Games,” said Jack Lynch, COA
technical director and a member of its oftreviled selection committee.
The chances are that Canadian athletes
will be successful beyond their wildest
dreams. When the Eastern bloc athletes remove themselves from the picture, Canadians stand at, or very near, the top in several
sports. The East Germans probably would
have finished second overall to the United
States had they gone to Los Angeles and the
Soviets third. Now, in the wake of the growing boycott, Canada’s best will have an opportunity to be recognized in sports where
they have traditionally been also-rans.
The actual selection of athletes will not
T
54
and a hero to emulate,” Lynch said. “This is
already happening in speed skating, where
there will be youngsters to carry on after
Gaetan Boucher. The hero is the catalyst
that makes the chemistry happen faster in
the programs.” Lynch said he hoped that
Sport Canada’s financing policy would follow the same guidelines as the COA if Canadians place more highly than ever before.
The final medal, a silver, was hung last
night around the neck of Carolyn Waldo,
19, of Beaconsfield, Que., who swims for the
Calgary Aquabelles.
It was Canada’s second silver in synchronized swimming, the other won by Kelly
Krycka and Sharon Hambrook, both of
Calgary.
Canada’s 10th and final gold was one of
11 Canadian medals won on Saturday - the
country’s greatest Olympic day ever. It was
captured by rhythmic gymnast Lori Fung, 21,
from Vancouver.
Earlier Saturday, Hugh Fraser of Burnaby,
B.C., and Alwyn Morris of Caughnawaga,
Que., won a gold medal in the 1,000 metre
kayak doubles.
Yesterday, Canada’s teen-age equestrian
Mario Deslauriers gambled for the bronze
medal and lost. Deslauriers, 19, of Bromont,
Que., ended his first Olympic competition
in fourth place after a dramatic jump-off for
the bronze in the Olympic equestrian individual jumping event. The young Canadian
had emerged from the first two rounds with
eight faults, tied with two Swiss competitors.
The weekend brought an end to the goldmedal dreams of Canadian boxers Willie
de Wit of Grande Prairie, Alta., and Shawn
O’Sullivan of Toronto, and a completion of
U.S. track star Carl Lewis’s much-heralded
four gold medals in track and field.
Olympics were Golden
Games for Canadians
T
he 1984 Los Angeles Olympics came
to a close last night, an apparent success for the host country United States and
for the largest Canadian contingent ever to
attend the Games.
The U.S. team captured almost as many
medals - 83 gold, 61 silver and 30 bronze - as
the next four countries combined.
The 83 gold medals surpassed the 80 won
by the Soviet Union at the 1980 Moscow
Games, which the United States boycotted.
The Soviet Union and most of its allies boycotted these Games.
In the 16 days since the Games opened,
the Canadian team, which finished sixth in
the overall standing, met with unparalleled
success.
Canadian athletes won 44 medals - 10
gold, 18 silver and 16 bronze - 29 more medals than any Canadian team had ever won.
55
Lewis won his fourth as a member of the
winning United States 4x100- metre relay
sprint team which also set the only track
and field world record of the 1984 Games
with a time of 37.83 seconds.
Lewis, who won the 100 metres, 200 metres and long jump, thus matched the 1936
record four golds won by American Jesse
Owens in the same events.
Lewis, 23, held a rare news conference
yesterday and said of Owens: ‘’He’s still a
legend to me and he’s special in that way.
His spirit was there and it gave me the inspiration.’’ Like virtually every other day of
the Games, the final day belonged to the
United States, particularly diver Greg Louganis. Louganis, considered by many to be the
world’s most nearly perfect diver, won his
second Olympic title in a week.
Louganis rang up five perfect scores of
10.0 in yesterday’s final round to become
the first man since 1928 to win two diving
gold medals in one Olympics.
CEC JENNINGS
he Summer Olympics end tomorrow
and the only substantial fault with
them these past two weeks was that they
were held in the summer. On pleasant days
and evenings you felt guilty, if outside, for
not being inside watching them, and, if
inside, felt likewise for not being outside.
Taking the TV set outside doesn’t work; outdoor TV is disorienting. It doesn’t go with
fresh air.
There is no question, though, about the
pull of the Olympics, with or without the
Russians. It makes sports fans of a lot of
people. “You should have seen that cyclist
guy last night,” said someone whose last
known interest in cycling ended when he
got his first car.
Someone else, whose last known interest
in horses was when they pulled milk wagons, allowed that she would like to see the
equestrians. Dressage, she felt, might be particularly interesting, but when she got her
first look at it she said, “Is this it?” Unfortunately, it was, and Greco-Roman wrestling
for those of us who know nothing about it is
equally gripping.
Over all, though, it was easy to imagine
there was more anxiety and nervousness
around television sets than among athletes.
If the athletes had felt as tense as some
viewers they would have had to been carried to their starting blocks.
T 56
This was particularly true in events where
Canadians were billed as strong medal
prospects and the higher their prospects,
the lumpier throats got at home. When Alex
Baumann paraded out with other swimmers, it was too much for one onlooker. He
went for a coffee and a cigarette. Baumann
had to stay put for the wait to get in the
pool. Then he won a gold medal. The man
with the coffee, by that time, would have
been too weak to carry it.
For those at home there is nothing to
match the feeling that accompanies the
Maple Leaf being raised and O Canada being
played to signal a Canadian gold. To judge
from facial expressions, there is nothing like
it for athletes, either.
This is the most moving part of the Olympics and exactly what they are not supposed
to be about. They are supposed to be the
epitome of the how- you-play-not-whetheryou-win ideal and that hope has as much
chance of overcoming human nature at the
Olympics as it does anywhere else.
But flag-waving on special occasions is not
necessarily bad, although what some people
jumped on Americans for an opening ceremony that extolled the United States. What
the seemed to want was a parade of penitents in sackcloth, wailing dirges rather than
celebrants singing America The Beautiful.
Why is known only to them.
Nor does the nationalistic side of the
Olympics necessarily mean that Peter Ueberroth, president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, was being naive,
or cynical, when he said during the opening
ceremonies, “Through sport we can take an
important step toward world peace and understanding.” There hasn’t been much in the
way of proof of that lately, but certainly the
world would feel easier if the United States
and Russia were again at the same Games.
The Olympian question is whether that will
ever come about.
57
1988
Seoul
Johnson literally flying when
he left the blocks
to do it naturally from the time he was 15
and it worked. I never saw any reason to
tamper with it. I was even criticized for not
changing him (to the more conventional
start off one foot).”
In the last few weeks before the Games,
after shaky performances in Zurich and
Cologne in mid-August, Johnson did little
work on his start and acceleration. He had
problems down the track that had to be
remedied if he wanted a realistic chance at
the Olympic gold.
In the weeks during which he was recovering from a torn hamstring, Johnson had
continued to work his muscular upper body
in the weight room. His upper body was
tightening up in the final 40 metres of races
and he had to become leaner.
“We went to endurance work,” Francis
said. “He ran a lot of 200s. He was able to
run a 19.6 (with a running start) in practice.
There was no question he was strong.
“But some of that muscle had to be converted. When you do weights, you get maximum strength, but when you do endurance
work, the muscle gets leaner. He hadn’t
achieved that yet when he ran in Europe.”
At Zurich, Johnson finished third behind
Lewis and Calvin Smith of the United States,
running a choppy race in 10.00 seconds. He
didn’t seem appropriately piqued by the
loss to rival Lewis and said he was still on
target for Seoul.
SEOUL KOREA (SOUTH)
BY JAMES CHRISTIE
C
oach Charlie Francis called it a run
“out of the next century.”
Certainly, sprinter Ben Johnson’s worldrecord form from beginning to end in the
Olympic 100 metres has opened a lot of eyes
to subtleties of technique and training that
may usher in a new era for the dash.
When Johnson beat Carl Lewis out of the
starting blocks on his way to a world record
of 9.79 seconds in the 100-metre race, he
was, quite literally, flying.
Still photographs of the start show that
a split second after the gun, he was diving
over the line, both hands up and both feet
off the ground. His push had put him half a
body length in front of the field before his
first stride.
Johnson’s unique starting style isn’t only a
matter of quick reaction time to the pistol. It
is also a function of instantly uncoiling the
strength of his 24-inch thighs and pushing
off with both feet, rather than one.
“He’s almost completely out of the blocks
before he starts to bring the back foot forward,” said Francis, the only coach to have
worked with Johnson. “I’m not sure it’s anything other than his trademark. He seemed
60
In retrospect, Johnson and Francis weren’t
panicking because they knew what they
were doing. Johnson wasn’t there only to
make money in the matchup with Lewis. It
provided a measuring stick for how much
work had to be done, and in which part of
his race.
Johnson’s reaction time in the Olympic 100 metres was not responsible for his
initial lead, as it had been in Rome at the
world championships. A year ago, Johnson
burst out of the blocks .129 seconds after
the gun, Lewis in .196. In Seoul, Johnson got
off in .132, Lewis in .136 and Linford Christie
of Great Britain in .138. At the gun, though,
Johnson had the advantage of strength and
style. He lifted his hands off the track and
fired forward off two pistons, like a swimmer leaving the block.
From 15 to 35 metres, he showed magnificent acceleration and opened up the lead.
By 50 metres, he had an almost two-metre
edge. It didn’t stop there.
“Ben’s indoor world record for 50 metres
is 5.55 seconds,” Francis said. “In Rome, he
got there in 5.53 and in Seoul it was 5.50.
“His 60-metre indoor record is 6.41 seconds. In Rome, he ran 6.38 for 60 and here it
was 6.33.
“He was .08 under his world-record pace
for the 100 at 80 metres and was continuing
to pull away from Lewis at 80. It’s reasonable to extrapolate that he could run 9.75 or
9.73 if he ran through the finish rather than
looking across.”
There is no telling when the ultimate
sprint for the human running machine may
be achieved. Johnson said after taking down
the world record from Smith’s 9.93 to 9.83
seconds in Rome that his mark might stand
for 50 years “unless I break it myself.”
This weekend, he figured that looking
across the empty lanes to his left in Seoul
and raising his arm in triumph may have
cost him about .03 seconds. “I eased off in
the last three or four metres,” he said. “I’ve
got to leave something for next year.”
61
result also drew an automatic two-year ban
from the IAAF, but Mr. Charest’s ruling renders that ban obsolete.
The news of the medal loss also will damage Mr. Johnson’s earning potential. The value of his world record and gold medal has
been estimated at $10-million to $15-million
in advertising and promotional contracts
from now until the 1992 Summer Olympics
in Barcelona, Spain.
Carol Anne Letheren, chef de mission
of the Canadian team in Seoul, said Mr.
Johnson handed over his medal Monday
afternoon after being informed that secondround tests upheld a finding that steroids
were present in his urine.
She said Mr. Johnson was accompanied at
the meeting by his mother, Gloria, and his
sister, Jean.
Asked how the athlete received the news,
Ms. Letheren said: “He appeared to be in a
complete state of shock and not comprehending anything.’’ Dr. Roger Jackson, president of the Canadian Olympic Association,
said early Tuesday that he talked with Mr.
Johnson half way through Monday night
(Seoul time).
Mr. Jackson refused to reveal what Mr.
Johnson said. Asked if the runner had denied steroid use, Mr. Jackson replied: “Yes.”
Mr. Johnson’s personal coach, Charlie
Francis, asked whether he had anything to
say to the Canadian public, replied: “What
Johnson stripped of gold
BY MURRAY CAMPBELL, JAMES CHRISTIE
AND MARY HYNES
SEOUL KOREA (SOUTH)
C
anadian sprinter Ben Johnson was
stripped of his Olympic gold medal
and banned from the Games after testing
positive for illegal drugs, the International
Olympic Committee said Tuesday.
The International Amateur Athletics
Federation later decided to award the medal
to second-place finisher Carl Lewis of the
United States.
The vote to take Mr. Johnson’s medal
away was unanimous and is not subject
to an appeal, members of the IOC said at a
press conference.
Mr. Johnson, 26, who had become the
world’s fastest human with consecutive
world records, including 9.79 seconds in the
100-metre dash Saturday at the 1988 Games,
tested positive for stanozolol, a banned anabolic steroid.
He left Seoul before noon Tuesday on a
Korean Airlines flight bound for Kennedy
International in New York City.
In Ottawa, Sport Minister Jean Charest,
calling the test a national embarrassment,
said Mr. Johnson will be banned for life from
national teams and will not receive any
more federal financial support. The doping
62
can I say? It’s an unfortunate situation.”
Canadian officials suggested that the
substance might have been administered by
a third party, but IOC information director
Michele Verdier said: “The steroid profile is
not consistent with such a claim.’’ According to Dr. Gustavo Tuccimei, president of
the Italian Sports Doctors Association and
a member of the medical commission, the
IOC executive board was given the result
late Monday night.
Dr. Robert Dugal, a Canadian member of
the commission, said tests showed the presence of stanozolol, also known as winstrol.
It is manufactured in the United States by
Winthrop, a pharamaceutical company.
The drug has a reputation among athletes
of being undetectable, but the IOC said its
tests are a warning that such reports are
untrue.
Dr. Dugal described the drug as “one
of the most dangerous anabolic steroids
known, because its structure is such that its
effect on the liver can lead to a number of
disturbances . . . to cancer.’’ Mr. Johnson’s
personal physician, Mario (Jamie) Astaphan, rejected the report, saying it was impossible for the athlete to have tested positive.
He didn’t elaborate.
Ms. Letheren said neither the athlete nor
his coach made any specific allegations
about third-party interference.
Dr. Jackson said he was satisfied with the
way the medical commission handled the
testing, although the Canadian team was
concerned that unauthorized individuals might have entered the doping-control
centre where Mr. Johnson retreated after the
race.
Dr. Jackson noted that the test data given
him by the medical commission indicated
the use of steroids in earlier periods.
A Canadian team staff member, Diane
Clement, said on the weekend that Mr. Johnson had to wait an hour - and drink several
bottles of beer - before he could produce a
post-race specimen.
There is confusion as to when Mr. Johnson
was last tested before the Olympics. According to the Canadian Track and Field Association, the last time was after the winter
nationals in Ottawa, an indoor meet. There
also were reports that he was tested at the
Olympic trials in Ottawa in August, but the
CFTA denied that.
However, Pat Reid, a Canadian high jump
coach, said Mr. Johnson passed a drug test
four weeks ago in Zurich.
“The same test - it was clean,’’ Mr. Reid
said. “We feel sick about it. The whole world
feels sick about it.’’ Mr. Johnson won his
long-awaited showdown with Mr. Lewis on
Saturday in an astonishing 9.79 seconds,
0.04 seconds under the world mark he set
at the 1987 world championships in Rome.
That record of 9.83 has been restored as the
63
world standard because of the drug test. Mr.
Lewis was second Saturday in a U.S.-record
9.92 seconds.
Britain’s Linford Christie has been moved
up to take the silver and fourth-place finisher Calvin Smith of the United States thus
has been given the bronze.
Mr. Lewis, his chances revived for a second
sweep of four Olympic gold medals (he won
four in Los Angeles in 1984), said in a statement: “If there is an incident, I am deeply
sorry.’’ He refused further comment.
Ms. Verdier was asked how the positive
test will affect the Olympic movement.
“Well, I think that Ben Johnson is certainly
a media star, but it is the same for any other
athlete. It means the IOC has taken a very
strong stance against doping and that our
system works and nobody - no matter who
he may be - can escape the system. That’s
all.”
She said she does not know if the COA will
be reprimanded. “It’s certainly sad for the
team and the athletes, but it proves the IOC
stance on drugs is working. We have to be
repressive in order to educate people, regretfully.”
Ms. Verdier explained that the medical
commission reports to the IOC executive
board with a recommendation that the athlete testing positive be disqualified.
“If it is a medal winner, the medal is automatically stripped (with no debate or vote
on the matter).”
Mr. Johnson was the seventh athlete and
third gold medalist to test positive at the
Seoul Games.
Bulgarian weightlifters Angel Guenchev,
who set three world records, and Mitko Grablev were suspended for use of furosemide,
a diuretic intended for quick weight loss.
But diuretics also can be used to mask the
presence of illegal drugs, such as musclebuilding steroids, by diluting urine samples.
Weightlifters Kalman Csengeri of Hungary
and Fernando Mariaca of Spain were suspended earlier in the Games, Mr. Csengeri
for the steroid testosterone and Mr. Mariaca
for amphetamines.
Mr. Csengeri was fourth in his weight class
and Mr. Mariaca 13th in his. In addition,
Jorge Quesada of Spain was expelled after
testing positive for use of a drug aimed at
steadying his shooting hand during the
modern pentathlon.
Australian pentathlete Alexander Watson
was banned after tests showed excessive
levels of caffeine in his urine after the fencing competition.
Mr. Quesada finished 33rd over all; Mr.
Watson was 12th after four events.
64
A little pink pill plays large
role in loss of medal
to other physiological changes that can be
chemically detected in both urine and blood
tests.
Steroids, often linked to body builders, have become prevalent in many other
sports where athletes seek to develop certain muscles. Johnson, who regularly lifts
weights as part of his training, has an unusually high degree of muscle development
in his upper body compared to others in his
sport.
The pure form of the hormone, testosterone, is usually administered by muscle injection because oral forms of the substance
are easily broken down by the body’s digestive system, Bain said.
However, because it is a naturally occuring substance, it is more difficult to detect in
athletes.
“An athlete needs to be taking very high
levels of testosterone for it to be detected,”
Bain said.
Many athletes who take steroids prefer
to take synthetics - like stanozolol - that do
not have the reproductive hormone effects
of testosterone. Detection is easier, though,
because these substances do not naturally
occur in the body.
However, athletes risk greater liver damage from oral synthetic steroids, Bain said.
Muscle buildup takes several weeks and is
enhanced by conditioning, which can influence what muscles become larger.
BY LAWRENCE SURTEES
I
t’s a little pink tablet given to people
with retarded muscle growth, hormone
deficiencies and protein loss.
It’s generic name is stanozolol and that’s
what Olympic drug testers in Seoul have
accused Canadian 100-metre winner Ben
Johnson of having in his urine.
Stanozolol, a prescription drug, is a
man-made anabolic steroid hormone. The
substance is made in Canada by Winthrop
Laboratories, a division of Sterling Drug Ltd.,
under the Winstrol brand name.
Like all anabolic steroids, which are
banned in Games competition, stanozolol
makes muscles increase in mass, which is
why “athletes take the stuff by the truckload,” said Dr. Jerald Bain, a reproductive
endocrinologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in
Toronto.
Steroids are naturally occuring protein
hormones found in both men and women.
The steroids used by athletes are androgen
hormones, which chemically resemble the
male sex hormone testosterone. They can
be taken orally or by injection, depending on whether the natural or man-made
form is being used. Either way, the hormone shows up in the urine and also leads
65
“While steroids build up muscles, that
does not mean that performance is going to
be improved,” Bain said.
Despite the widespread perception among
athletes that steroids help to beef up performance, medical studies remain inconclusive, Bain said yesterday.
“I’m not convinced strong evidence exists
that steroids increase performance,” he said.
All listings for steroids in the Compendium of Pharmaceutical Specialities, the
Canadian bible of prescription drugs, carry
the warning that “anabolic steroids do not
enhance athletic ability.”
But regardless of the physiological effect,
steroids definitely have a strong psychological effect, which some athletes have correlated to a mild high. And the perception
that the drug confers an edge - or will not, if
not taken - is incredibly powerful, Bain said.
Steroids will show up in the body for two
to three weeks after an athlete has stopped
taking them, the CPS says. Other characteristic chemical alterations can also be detected in both urine and blood tests.
Johnson’s agent suggested yesterday that
the positive test was the product of a mistake or sabotage.
Urine tests remain the subject of medical
controversy because of the number of false
positive results. A survey on the accuracy of
50 testing laboratories in the United States
published in the Journal of the American
Medical Association last week found that 16
out of 1,000 people could be falsely accused
of illegal drug use. Though the percentage of
false positives was only 1.6 per cent, experts
said that was cause for concern.
However, the International Olympic
Committee’s medical commission is taking
special steps to prevent false positive testing in the lab results it submits to the IOC’s
executive board.
All medal winners at the Seoul Games
must submit to urine tests for a variety of
drugs and substances immediately after
an event. To guard against false results, the
urine sample is divided into two portions;
the first is tested immediately and the second is used for more rigorous testing if any
positive result is found in the first sample.
Only if both samples are positive is a
result announced by the Olympic medical
committee after analyzing the test results
and discussing them with the athlete and
coach in question.
66
Trent Frayne on Ben Johnson
where that people pursue games.
The Ben Johnson episode is a tragedy of
shocking proportions. His decision to ingest
anabolic steroids is surely a reflection of the
intense pressure he labored under, the pressure of a poor boy with a speech stammer
moving north from the Caribbean with his
mother and achieving fame as the world’s
fastest human, a name of such glamor and
allure in sports that only that other almost
mystical title, the world’s heavyweight boxing champion, can match it.
It’s a tragedy for others besides Ben, too.
Last Friday night, his achievement on a
million tiny screens here at home touched
almost everyone. It’s surely safe to say that
Canada’s national pride in sports has not
swelled so high since that marvellous moment in Moscow in 1972 when Paul Henderson put the puck past Vladislav Tretiak with
34 seconds left to play. That unforgettable
goal slid into the Soviet net 16 years ago
almost to the day of the revelation of Ben’s
dishonor - Sept. 28.
Most people want heroes, especially heroes who overcome adversity in their climb
toward the stars. The Canadian hockey team
did that against the largest country in the
world, the Soviet Union, in 1972, down three
games to one and then coming from behind
to win three consecutive games.
On a lesser scale, the Blue Jays did it, too,
bringing joy to baseball fans from one end
W
hen the word was flashed that Ben
Johnson had failed a drug test, the
first reaction was the same one that had
greeted the news about Wayne Gretzky being traded.
Some things just can’t happen in the halfworld of sports, and here were two of them.
And then, all too soon, each of these impossible events was confirmed, and the first
thought about Ben was a phrase that has
reverberated around the sports world for 70
years: “Say it ain’t so, Joe.’’ In 1919 the Chicago White Sox threw the World Series and a
little kid tearfully asked the great White Sox
outfielder, Shoeless Joe Jackson, to tell him
it wasn’t so what everyone was saying.
But it was, and Shoeless Joe was banned
for life by a federal judge brought in as the
new commissioner of baseball to save the
game’s blackened name, Kenesaw Mountain
Landis. Shoeless Joe Jackson’s life was ruined.
And, of course, so is Ben Johnson’s. But
today the ramifications are so much greater
than they were for Shoeless Joe because
baseball and the World Series had only a
limited appeal 70 years ago. There were no
television satellites to carry the pictures
around the world and clutch the attention
of millions of people in Asia and Australia
and Africa and South America and every-
67
of the country to the other in 1985 when
they won the American League East’s division title. And part of that coast-to-coast joy
was not so much because the Blue Jays won
as that they overcame the team of legend,
the New York Yankees, the greatest name
in baseball, to do it. The celebrated novelist Margaret Atwood, who didn’t know the
infield fly rule from an onside kick, was
moved to write in The Globe and Mail the
next day, “If someone had told me 35 years
ago that I’d be paying any attention to a
baseball team of any kind, anywhere, in
1985, I’d have reacted with sullen disbelief.’’
But she got caught up in the excitement
of the moment, and you can multiply her
number by hundreds of thousands, likely,
who felt an enormous pride in Ben Johnson’s record-shattering achievement last
Friday night.
But, now, that has all gone out the window and the pride has been replaced by an
emptiness, an enormous sense of loss, a tear
for whatever motive led this great sprinter
to cheat.
Oh, Ben, say it ain’t so.
68
1992
Barcelona
Rowers strike gold
winning five of the six gold medals.
The Canadian women have ruled the
roost since the 1991 world championships,
and on the weekend they performed exactly
according to form.
On Saturday, the top-rated pair of Marnie
McBean (Toronto) and Kathleen Heddle
(Vancouver) cruised to victory, as did the
fours, despite the fact that Kay Worthington
(Toronto) replaced injured Jennifer Doey
(Peterborough, Ont.) alongside Kirsten
Barnes (Vancouver), Brenda Taylor (Nanaimo, B.C.) and Jessica Monroe (Vancouver)
the day before the Olympic regatta began.
Yesterday, it was the turn of the women’s
eights - Shannon Crawford (Guelph, Ont.)
subbing for Doey, with Barnes, Taylor,
Megan Delehanty (Edmonton), McBean,
Worthington, Monroe, Heddle and cox Lesley Thompson (London, Ont.). They routed
the field by 1 lengths.
“It was such a zen kind of start,” McBean
said. “It was all there. If there was a little
voice telling me we’d win the gold, it was
Lesley. It was just the tone of her voice. You
could hear the confidence.”
Doey, who would have won two gold medals but for back spasms, sneaked into the
photographers’ area before the medal presentation and then joined the team on the
podium, where Brenda Taylor lent her her
medal.
“It’s just been the best experience of my
STEPHEN BRUNT
B A N Y O L E S , S PA I N
T
oday, rowing is at the centre of the
Canadian sporting universe.
As four victorious men’s and women’s
crews and sculler Silken Laumann celebrated yesterday afternoon, a perplexing question remained: Can it happen again?
In two days, the rowers won four gold
medals: the men’s and women’s eights, the
women’s pairs and the women’s fours. Add
Laumann’s bronze in the single sculls, and
it marks Canadian dominance in a single
Olympic sport unprecedented except for the
country’s 10 swimming medals at the boycotted Los Angeles Games in 1984.
“The athletes have always been there, but
we had to find them, show them the way
and convince them it’s possible,” said men’s
coach Mike Spracklen, who also coaches
Laumann. “And then it steamrolls on.”
It has steamrolled especially in the past
two years, since Spracklen was hired and the
men quit their day jobs so they could train
full-time for the Olympics. The women followed suit a year later.
“It’s pretty hard to have bad performances
in that kind of environment,” Laumann
said. “We just work harder than anyone
else.”
At the 1988 Olympics, East Germany dominated the women’s rowing competition,
71
life,” Doey said.
Although the women were expected to
win because of their performance in qualifying rounds, the men’s victory was more of
a surprise. The German crew had lost only
once since 1988, to the Canadians at the
Duisberg regatta in 1991.
Yesterday, the Canadian crew - John Wallace (Burlington, Ont.), Bruce Robertson
(Calgary), Mike Forgeron (Cape Breton,
N.S.), Robert Marland (Mississauga, Ont.),
Michael Rascher (Fernie, B.C.), Andy Crosby
(Hamilton), Derek Porter (Victoria) and
coxswain Terry Paul (Peterborough, Ont.)
led from start to finish, but had to hold off
a later charge from Romania. The margin of
victory was only 0.14 seconds. The Germans
finished third.
“We had no power left after we crossed
the line,” Robertson said. “We just went out
there and gave it everything we had.”
Laumann, who called the men’s race
for CTV while IOC president Juan Antonio
Samaranch waited to congratulate her on
her bronze medal, seemed more emotional
about watching her boyfriend, Wallace, win
his race than she was about her own accomplishment.
“It was just amazing,” she said. “I was so
happy for John and Mike (Spracklen).
Most of the victors see the weekend as
the end of their rowing careers. “I’m excited
about my future,” Crosby said. “We’ve had
to sacrifice a lot. I’m trying to get into med
school and just get my life back on track. I’m
determined to put this much ferocity into
the rest of my life.”
Spracklen was unsure whether the medals
would spark interest in rowing in Canada.
“It’s still a minority sport,” he said. “But
there should be interest. Human beings are
all fascinated with the water, and children
love to play in boats. It’s a great sensation
being out on the water.”
Last night, before dispersing, the team
celebrated along with the other rowers in
Banyoles. “I feel a sense of loss for these
guys,” Marland said. “I’ve been with them a
long time and it’s going to be hard not seeing them any more.”
Not everyone, though, was sounding quite
so bittersweet.
“We’ve spent four years peaking our bodies for this day,” the ever- outgoing McBean
said. “And now we’re going to go out and
wreck them.”
72
Silken smooth sculling
the story: Laumann and her
teammates lead Canada’s
glorious Olympic weekend
Ten weeks ago, Laumann’s right leg was
mangled in a rowing accident in Germany.
What followed for the world champion from
Mississauga, Ont., were five operations,
painful rehabilitation and then an apparently quixotic attempt just to make the
Games.
She willed herself here as much as anything, then made it through the preliminary
round and won her semi-final.
For yesterday’s final, the lake at Banyoles
was still as glass, perfectly framed by the
surrounding misty green hills.
Being there was accomplishment enough.
But it was the stretch drive that pushed Laumann far beyond the usual requirements of
athletic heroism.
“I thought, ‘I don’t want to come in
fourth,’ “ she said afterward, her bad leg
propped on a chair and wrapped in an
elastic bandage. “Fourth is a hard position
to come. You just miss a medal by a little
bit. So I just thought when she went by me,
‘I’m not going to be fourth.’ “ She wouldn’t
accept fourth place, just like she wouldn’t
accept the word of doctors who told her she
would not be rowing in August in Spain. “I
look down and see a bronze medal,” she
said, “and it seems like the accident was a
lot more than 10 weeks ago.”
For Canadians, Laumann has defined the
Barcelona Olympics - no slight to those who
STEPHEN BRUNT
B A R C E L O N A S PA I N
There were about 250 metres to go when
the U.S. scull pulled ahead, and Silken Laumann had her chance to counter some of
the cynicism caused by Ben Johnson’s positive steroid test four years ago.
She did not let it pass.
Laumann won a bronze medal yesterday
at the Olympic Games, writing a near-perfect end to her courageous story.
Meanwhile, her rowing teammates hauled
in an unprecedented four gold medals,
sailors Eric Jespersen of Sidney, B.C., and
Ross MacDonald of Vancouver captured a
bronze in the Star class, and Angela Chalmers of Brandon, Man., finished third in the
women’s 3,000 metres. On Saturday, Bruny
Surin of Montreal established himself as the
fourth-fastest man in the world (in the 100
metres) and Johnson stumbled in the penultimate stage of his comeback.
Put those accomplishments together and,
without question, it was the greatest weekend in Canadian Olympic history. Canada
has 12 medals at these Games, two more
than in Seoul but with a week yet to go.
73
have won gold so far and those who may
follow - and, in the process, has buried the
memories of Seoul. She has made believers
of us all again.
Four years after the Johnson debacle,
Canadians needed a grand gesture to defuse
their cynicism. Johnson’s unfortunate legacy was to make us skeptical about this most
elevated athletic competition.
There’s enough that’s wrong, dishonest
and manipulative about the Olympic movement. If you lose faith in the athletes themselves, there is little left to cheer.
This weekend should have gone a long way
to restoring faith in the competitors, if not in
the system. There’s no way you can be cynical about Laumann, no way you can be cynical about the brilliance of the other Canadian
rowers, who won gold medals in the women’s pairs, fours and eights and in the men’s
eights. Watching them, the notion of faster,
higher, stronger became palatable again.
Even seeing Johnson get as far as the
semi-finals in the 100 metres before stumbling out of the blocks and finishing last
in his heat served as something of a balm,
although the mystery of what he was and
what he might have been will not be resolved fully.
After her race, Laumann seemed spent in
a way that she hadn’t been during a week
of intense pressure on and off the water.
She answered the same questions one more
time: Did the leg hurt when she rowed now?
No. Did she ever lose faith during her recovery? No. Would she have won gold if she
hadn’t been injured? Maybe.
“I wish it hadn’t happened,” she said of
the accident.
Laumann was non-committal about
whether she will quit rowing after the Olympics, or if she is willing to hang on another
four years and go to Atlanta, to her fourth
Olympic Games (she won a bronze in double sculls in 1984). Her only certain engagement is for more surgery, which will remove
some scar tissue and wrap some more skin
over a skin graft.
“The lower leg still looks a bit like a shark
has taken a bite out of it, but apparently the
doctors can do amazing things these days,”
she said.
Just before going off for some private time
with John Wallace, with whom she lives and
who won a gold with the men’s eights, Laumann was asked what it’s like being a media
sensation back home.
“I haven’t thought about it. I was in the
hospital and then in Victoria training, and
then I was at the Olympics. I’ve been in a
very sheltered environment. I haven’t really been exposed to how I’ve been seen
in Canada. It will only last a little while,
though. After all, I’m just a rower. They’ll
forget about me sooner or later.”
Don’t bet on it.
74
Emotion fuels silver-medal
swim
change that, so I’m a little disappointed. But
my view won’t change the result, will it? I
can’t understand it, but you have to learn to
live with it.”
She said that, like herself, Babb-Sprague
had a career swim and deserved a gold
medal for that effort.
On paper, the scores looked like this: in
the figures portion - in which a Brazilian
judge mistakenly punched 8.7 instead of a
9.7 on her poolside computer for Frechette’s
albatross spin - Babb-Sprague outscored
Frechette 92.808 to 92.557; in yesterday’s
routines, Frechette outscored the American 99.160 to 99.040. The totals left BabbSprague in front, 191.848 to 191.717.
Had Frechette received the 9.7 the Brazilian judge intended, the two would have
finished the figures virtually tied, and yesterday’s swim would have brought victory to
the Canadian.
While Frechette’s anger was put to good
use in the pool, and later diminished to
resignation in the face of an unfathomable
swim bureaucracy, the anger of other Canadians bubbled on.
Chef de mission Ken Read called the rejection of Canada’s appeal “an outrage.”
“The oath taken on behalf of all judges
and officials at the Games promises to officiate ‘with complete impartiality respecting
and abiding by the rules of sportsmanship.’
The rejection of Canada’s appeal is a rejec-
JAMES CHRISTIE
B A R C E LO N A S PA I N
R
obbed of the synchronized swimming
gold medal by a squad of bureaucrats,
Sylvie Frechette did the only thing that was
in her power yesterday.
She turned anger into graceful action
and had the swim of her life at the Olympic
Games.
Performing stunning spins and kicks
to the Vangelis work Mask, 25-year- old
Frechette scored well enough to beat the
marks of U.S. gold-medalist Kristen BabbSprague in yesterday’s final routine.
But that wasn’t enough to overcome a
scoring error in the preceding day’s figures
competition, or a ridiculous appeals process
that was carried out with no input from a
judge who wanted to correct her mistake.
“In a way it helped me,” Frechette said. “I
was so mad, so full of energy I could have
killed anyone.
“I just swam with all the emotion I had.”
If possible, there was more grace in the
way Frechette handled the personal pressures and the no-win situation than she had
shown in the water, where she recorded five
perfect scores of 10 to Babb-Sprague’s three.
“I did my best,” she said with a bright
smile. “It was a mistake, and that was part of
the system. I came to swim well and that’s
what I did. I’m proud of what I did.
“There was a scoring error, and I could not
75
tion of that oath and of the most fundamental principles on which the Olympic movement is founded.
“It is a decision that will have a lasting
and negative impact on the Games and the
movement, and is one that can rightly be
described as obscene.”
In Ottawa, Pierre Cadieux, the Minister of
State for Youth, Fitness and Amateur Sport,
expressed indignation about the decision.
“Due process to bring fair and balanced
judgment to cases of error or dispute is a
fundamental principle in sport. I urge Canadian sport authorities to pursue the case
to all appropriate bodies, to ensure that the
situation is clarified and that such errors are
not allowed to occur again,” he said.
As usual in subjectively judged sports,
there is an ugly political edge to what happened. According to some witnesses, when
the Brazilian judge hit the wrong key she
immediately tried to change the score, but
the old score did not clear from her machine. She asked that the scores be held, but
could not communicate with the Japanese
assistant referee. The American referee-inchief made a decision to let the score stand.
According to Ross Wales, a Cincinnati lawyer who is honorary secretary of the swim
governing body FINA, there is a bylaw in the
sport “that on an issue of fact, a decision
cannot be reversed.”
The 13 members of the FINA bureau who
heard the appeal looked upon the marks as
facts, but couldn’t sort out the sequence of
events or intentions of the people involved.
They did not summon the Brazilian judge,
Ana Maria da Silveira Lobo, and the U.S.
referee-in-chief sent a written statement.
Asked why the judge was not called into
the meeting, Wales replied, “It’s not the way
our procedures work.”
He said some of the matters raised by the
media - including the absence of flash cards
for judges to show their scores in the case of
malfunctioning equipment - were not addressed in the appeal.
“Two or three of what I consider important issues were not presented,” he said.
“But it was not the mission of the bureau to
get to the bottom of the problem or serve
justice, simply to hear what was presented
and to make a decision.
“We felt there was adequate information
for the original decision (to make the 8.7
stand) to be upheld.
“I cannot tell you exactly what happened.
I’m convinced we couldn’t have (got to the
bottom of it).
“There’s not much I can say to the athletes. I think the decision is fair, but it is
not without controversy. I’m not convinced
there was a mistake. She (the judge) had
two opportunities to change it.”
The Canadian appeal suggested that the
problem be resolved by taking the four un-
74
disputed scores and averaging them. Such
reasoning was rejected.
“I cannot believe it,” said Frechette’s
coach, Julie Sauve, disgusted that a technical
error cost her swimmer the gold. “When I
get home, I am going to throw my computer
out the window.
“I told Sylvie I believe in justice. I don’t believe in the computer. It was not a mistake
by a swimmer.”
Frechette’s fellow competitors were impressed at the strength she showed in handling the controversy.
“She is a tremendous competitor and a
great person. I’m not surprised at how she
dealt with it because of the type of person
she is,” said Babb- Sprague, who considers
Frechette a friend. “It’s not an issue for us.”
Fumiko Okuno of Japan, who placed third,
said “it’s a pity this tragedy happened. If it
happened to me, I’d hope to react with that
courage. She’s been absolutely magnificent.”
With the Olympics behind her, Frechette,
the world champion soloist, has more
weighty matters to attend to. A few days
before she came to Barcelona, she returned
to her apartment in Laval, Que., to find her
agent and companion, Sylvain Lake, dead,
an apparent suicide.
“When you go through a personal tragedy,
it’s normal to have a letdown sometime. I
didn’t have time to do that. When things get
back to normal, I’ll let it go.
“I decided to come here and to carry on.
I had to think about it seriously, but I came
to swim for myself and Sylvain and Julie and
my family and everyone who has supported
me for 18 years. I did the best I could.”
As for changing the system that cost her
the gold medal, she said: “I wouldn’t want
another athlete to go through that.”
77
programs, or the exemplary leadership
shown by gritty individuals such as sculler
Silken Laumann, who won a bronze after a
remarkable recovery from a horrifying injury in May, which left her with a broken leg
and severely cut calf muscle. Canada did not
have that kind of emotional inspiration in
1988, when its most highly publicized athlete was the reticent Ben Johnson.
And in an Olympics at which 64 nations
won medals - as opposed to 52 in Seoul
- Canada was also clearly part of a larger
trend. With the financial burden of supporting high-level sports rapidly shifting in most
countries from government to business,
there has been at least the appearance of
spreading the wealth.
An athlete like sprinter Frankie Fredericks
from Namibia, for instance, can train and
compete at a world-class level because of his
endorsements. In the future, Nike, Reebok
and adidas may be the real dominant Olympic teams.
All of those factors served to open up the
medal podium in Barcelona, and Canada
happily climbed aboard with the rest of the
planet.
“We’re doing well because the traditional
powers are not doing as well,” said highjump coach Carl Georgevski of Toronto.
“We’ve always been competitive, but now
the world is coming to our position and the
playing field is becoming more equal. It’s
Great strides for Canadians
JAMES CHRISTIE AND STEPHEN BRUNT
B A R C E L O N A S PA I N
H
alfway down Barcelona’s Olympic
mountain Montjuic - unflatteringly
dubbed Mount Juice in reference to the
suspected widespread use of steroids - two
Canadian coaches paused to admire the
panorama.
From their vantage point at the 1992
Olympics, they could almost see the mythical level playing field - a place where men
and women could have real tests of muscle
and flesh, instead of pharmacology.
On such a drug-free field, they said, Canadian athletes could hold their own with the
world’s best.
In Barcelona, the level field was still a mirage. But Canadians made rather amazing
strides at this Olympics, with their largest
medal haul in any full-attendance Games.
Canada doubled its take of gold medals at
Seoul in 1988, winning six times. In Seoul,
Canada won a total of 10 medals. In Barcelona, Canadians were presented with 18.
There are a number of reasons for the
improvement. The coaches point to the
institution of more rigid doping tests, which
have caused world-level performances to
back up to the level of mere mortals.
Administrators point to development
78
because random drug testing works.”
He noted an example in the men’s high
jump, which was won at the lowest height
since the 1976 Olympics, 2.34 metres.
“That’s only one centimetre higher than
the Canadian record. They’re not beyond
reach anymore, and Canadians can say ‘I
can attain the level myself.’ Our kids can
dream again.”
The current generation of athletes had
grown up in the era and aura of Charlie
Francis, the drug-espousing coach who
turned Ben Johnson into the fastest man on
the planet. The whispered philosophy was
that to be among the best, one had to use
banned drugs because most of the people at
the top were using them.
The federal government’s Athlete Assistance Program was based on lists of worldranked athletes, which inevitably included
drug-enhanced performances, and financially awarded those who kept pace. That
system is changing and anti-doping initiatives in Canada and other parts of the world,
however slow, are producing a positive
effect for Canadians.
But there is more to Canada’s rise than the
war on drugs.
Sports such as rowing, which didn’t field a
single finalist in Seoul, produced four golds
and a bronze medal at Banyoles. Rowing
officials revamped their programs, did more
with less in the face of government spend-
ing cutbacks, and exposed their elite athletes to constant world- class competition,
so that high performance became a regular
thing. Proven coaches such as Britain’s Mike
Spracklen were hired. Before going into the
Olympic competition, Canada already could
boast several 1991 world championship
crews.
Ms. Laumann, world champion in women’s sculls, having no real competition
among Canadian women, went to train with
Mr. Spracklen and the men’s team, doubling
her personal workload.
“This is a team of character,” said Canadian chef de mission Ken Read. “They have
had to face tough times over the past four
years, as the sport establishment and Canadian public did their self-analysis into the
Seoul debacle. Overcoming personal adversity in the past few weeks has only underscored their toughness.”
Mark McKoy, who won the men’s hurdles,
was an athlete who had to work independently of the Canadian system, after admitting drug use during the Dubin inquiry into
doping. Alone at his level in Canada, he
went to Wales to train with the great British
hurdler Colin Jackson, so that all his practice sessions were as high-calibre and demanding as most races.
“I wouldn’t be here without him,” said Mr.
McKoy, who was banned by Athletics Canada from the national team for two years for
79
leaving Seoul early in the wake of the Johnson fiasco.
Back-stroker Mark Tewksbury, who won
Canada’s first gold here, likewise increased
his workload massively under swim coach
Deryk Snelling, and even worked out in the
mid-day sun in Australia at Christmas, so
that his body would be prepared when he
asked everything of it in Barcelona.
Canada also won two silver medals in synchronized swimming, a sport in which the
country has always been a world leader and
a medalist at every Olympics in which it has
been contested. But the solo silver by Sylvie
Frechette was nothing short of a study in
courage after the suicide of her agent and
long-time companion a few days before she
left for Barcelona. While she was here, she
faced a controversy of a marking error that
cost her the gold, yet still swam the best
routine on the final day to fall just short of
the win.
Now, Canada’s new generation of athletes
have enough, non-Niked icons to look up
to who should provide plenty of inspiration
for the next time the world comes together
to compete.
They will always remember Barcelona in
the gleaming smile of Mr. Tewksbury when
he saw he had won, or his choking tears
when he tried to sing the national anthem.
They will remember Ms. Laumann, getting
passed by a U.S. rower with 250 metres left
in her race, ignoring pain, sucking it all up
the way Canadians seldom do and taking
her body to a place it had never been to get
a medal.
They will remember that there is a time
for Canadians to be winners too.
Frechette declared gold medalist
JAMES CHRISTIE
ylvie Frechette had waited out some
long moments as a synchronized
swimmer, her eyes searching the marks on
the scoreboard to see whether she’d been
good enough to win.
This time, the wait was exactly 16 months.
This time, the scoreboard didn’t lie. Ms.
Frechette was good as gold in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
The 25-year-old Montreal swimmer yesterday was officially declared a gold medalist for her performance at Barcelona. The
International Olympic Committee executive
board agreed yesterday with the international swimming federation FINA (Federation Internationale de Natation Amateur )
that a judging error had cost Ms. Frechette
the gold medal she deserved.
IOC sports director Gilbert Felli said Barcelona champion Kristen Babb- Sprague of the
United States would retain her gold medal.
Ms. Frechette had said she didn’t want Ms.
Babb-Sprague to lose her gold as part of the
resolution.
The official result will record no silver
S
80
medalist.
“It was a very long time, 16 months today,
because the solo finals were Aug. 6, but it’s a
happy ending,” Ms. Frechette said yesterday
in a telephone interview.
When she learned of the IOC decision
yesterday, Ms. Frechette was interviewing
a guest as host of a half-hour TV show in
Montreal, which will premiere next month.
“It will be a great Christmas, but I’m not
hanging this one (medal) on the tree. It’s
going to stay on my neck for a long time.”
Ms. Frechette, now retired from competition and working as a marketing representative for National Bank of Canada, was the
focus of national attention and sympathy
as she headed off to Barcelona for the last
Olympic solo competition. Synchronized
swimming will be a team event in 1996.
Days before she was to leave for Europe,
she returned from a training camp to find
her agent and long-time companion, Sylvain
Lake, dead, a suicide. Instead of quitting,
she elected to carry on with the Olympic
mission.
Then a Brazilian judge entered a score in
error on an electronic board that locked out
corrections. It occurred on a move called an
albatross. In light of the ensuing bureaucratic, political and technical tangle, it couldn’t
have been more appropriately named.
Ultimately, the Canadian team, the chef de
mission, the minister of sport and Canada’s
senior IOC member, Richard Pound, all
joined the chorus of protest as swim officials stuck their heads deep into an appeals
process that yielded no satisfaction.
At home, Ms. Frechette was nothing less
than a martyr.
“I’m the luckiest athlete from the Olympics,” Ms. Frechette said. “When I arrived
home at Dorval, I had the gold medal from
the people. They’d struck it specially for me.
The whole population was behind me and
supporting me.”
It’s unlikely that getting the gold medal
will make Ms. Frechette any more popular
than she already is in Quebec. Agent Daniel
Lamarre will meet officials of the Montreal
Forum to see whether the official presentation of the gold, tentatively scheduled for
Wednesday of next week, can be handled
there.
“Because of what happened in Barcelona,
she was already a special character for Quebec,” Mr. Lamarre said. “In recent research,
she’s as popular as the hockey players, and
in this city, that’s significant.
“She was already at her peak in terms of
popularity. But this event, if I judge by fever
- everyone’s crazy about this news today - it
will have a positive impact.”
Besides her contract as an employee of
National Bank, Ms. Frechette also has a
national endorsement for Brita water-filter
systems. She also has her own bathing
81
suit line and launched her biography two
months ago.
“She’s not a millionaire as a result of Barcelona, but the important thing with being
employed by the bank is that it ensures her
future,” Mr. Lamarre said.
He said Ms. Frechette tours the country on
behalf of the bank, “speaking to chambers
of commerce and school groups and how
important it is to get on with your life and
school. Her testimonial has impact.”
“This resolves the Olympics for me,”
Ms. Frechette said. “I can go on with other
things.”
82
1996
Atlanta
End of Atlanta games
Child and Mark Heese. The two men beat
Portugal yesterday afternoon in the bronzemedal match.
Hundreds of Canadian flags waved Saturday night at the Olympic Stadium, and dozens more were waved at the smaller rowing
and cycling venues by spectators, friends
and relatives of the Canadian athletes, and
other teammates.
“We were told by our coach not to go out
and watch any of the events,” said Alison
Sydor of North Vancouver, who is favoured
to win a gold medal for Canada in mountain
biking tomorrow. “But we went to see Donovan on Saturday night and went to the track
[yesterday] to see the cycling. I’m glad we’re
not racing tomorrow [today]. Watching all
those Canadian medals is exhausting. We’ve
declared ourselves good-luck charms.”
Canadian officials were so sure this would
be a splendid weekend that they booked a
victory party for last night at Canada Olympic House, a temporary Canadian gathering
place in downtown Atlanta.
Still, no doubt there were a few sighs of
relief when it became clear those ambitious plans would be justified. Canada had
won only a silver and three bronze medals
through Friday, the seventh day of competition, and critics were carping that these
were destined to be miserable Games for the
country.
But 14 medals in nine days is slightly
NEIL A. CAMPBELL
AT L A N TA
W
hat was advertised as a banner
weekend for Canada’s Olympic
team turned out to be exactly that.
“We got enough silver this weekend to
hold a dinner party,” said Brian Richardson,
head coach of the successful rowing team.
It was a gold and bronze weekend, too, as
Canada added six medals yesterday to the
four it captured Saturday.
The highlight for Canadians in Atlanta
and an estimated four million television
viewers back home happened late Saturday
at the Olympic Stadium, where Donovan
Bailey of Oakville, Ont., earned the title of
world’s fastest man by winning the men’s
100 metres in a world-record 9.84 seconds.
Earlier Saturday, Kathleen Heddle of
Vancouver and Marnie McBean of Toronto
became the first Canadian athletes to win
three Olympic gold medals, taking the final
of the women’s double sculls at Gainesville,
Ga., to add to their gold haul at the Barcelona Games four years ago.
Canadian rowers won six medals during the weekend, and cyclists Curt Harnett
of Thunder Bay, Ont., and Brian Walton of
North Delta, B.C., earned one each. Canada’s
10th weekend medal came from the Toronto-based beach-volleyball team of John
85
Bailey, teammates
full value for gold
ahead of the pace set four years ago, when
Canada won 12 after nine days and went
home from Spain with 17. This team is on a
pace to match the Canadian Olympic Association’s pre-Games prediction of 20 to 22
medals, and has surpassed The Associated
Press’s forecast of 12 medals.
The hoopla over Bailey’s win was in stark
contrast to the genteel aura surrounding the
rowers, cyclists and beach volleyballers. Victory in the 100 will be worth around $5-million a year in endorsements for the sprinter.
“I still can’t see myself as an Olympic
champion,” he said.
Bailey, who emigrated from Jamaica when
he was 13, talked his way into a controversy
before the Olympics began. In a magazine
interview, he was quoted as saying that
Canada is just as racist as the United States.
After the article was published and the debate began, he said he had been misquoted.
He wrapped the Canadian flag around his
shoulders during his victory lap Saturday
night. Yesterday, he said: “I don’t spend
enough time in Canada,” and later took a
call of congratulations from Prime Minister
Jean Chrétien.
Bailey’s victory was big news locally,
where the headline in the Atlanta JournalConstitution said: Fastest Ever.
JAMES CHRISTIE
SPORT REPORTER
AT L A N TA
D
onovan Bailey ran his final seven
strides of the centennial Olympic
Games with his arm raised triumphantly in
the air.
He’ll run his next step as one of the
world’s most famous -- and marketable -athletes, the most prominent member of a
five-member team that combined to end a
U.S. dynasty in sprint relays at the Olympic
Games.
Bailey crossed the line Saturday night
in the 4 x 100-metre relay after one of the
most powerful relay legs ever seen, blasting down the home stretch at the Olympic
Stadium in an astounding 8.95 seconds after
Bruny Surin of Montreal gave him a flying
start. The team set a national record of 37.69
seconds, compared with the 38.05 posted by
the United States.
Toppling the boastful U.S. team at home
was an additional reward, Bailey said. “It
can’t get any sweeter,” the double-gold
medalist from Oakville, Ont., said. “This was
better than winning the 100 metres. I got to
see four of my teammates get medals, and
we get to stand up there and hear the anthem and see the flag and look at the sky.
86
It’s golden.”
Golden, indeed. One week earlier, Bailey
stunned the sprint world with a world record of 9.84 seconds in the men’s 100. Already this past week, post cards of his finish
in that race were being marketed by Games
organizers, and the bar at Canada House,
a temporary headquarters of the Canadian
Olympic Association, was selling a newly
concocted drink for $3.50 (U.S.) “dedicated
to Donovan Bailey.”
Bailey’s former agency for endorsements,
International Managment Group (the contract ended during the Games) predicted his
name and face would be worth $4-million to
$5-million a year in endorsements after the
Games.
But the real golden boy Saturday night,
the man who mostly accounted for the win,
was one of the less-heralded members of
the team, Ottawa’s Glenroy Gilbert.
It was he who took the baton from leadoff runner Robert Esmie of Sudbury, 0.10
seconds behind Tim Harden of the United
States. Jon Drummond of the United States
got the jump on Esmie, running his first
round of the Games in the main event, but
then Gilbert, described by coach Dan Pfaff
as “born for relay running,” pounded down
the back straight. He simply ate up Harden,
who was fiddling with the baton, looking for
a better grip.
By the time Gilbert got the stick to Surin,
Canada had a clear lead. Surin edged Mike
Marsh, and Bailey blew Dennis (the Menace) Mitchell off the track.
“We came in here as underdogs,” Gilbert
said. “I used that as something to boost me,
after not making it as far as I’d hoped in the
100 metres. We came in ready to battle them
zone for zone and for respect. After I passed
off, I knew we pretty much had the relay
won.”
Bailey apologized to his teammates for
raising his arm in victory so far before the
finish line. “If I could do one thing over, I’d
have run right through to the finish because
it certainly would have been a world record
for them. It would have made winning on
U.S. turf even more special.”
But his exuberance was understandable.
All week long, since the running of the 100
and the winning of the long jump by U.S.
veteran Carl Lewis, there was much debate
about whether the most famous anchor
in sprint history should be put on the U.S.
team to let him try to win a record 10th
Olympic gold.
U.S. media reports took a U.S. gold medal
for granted, never offering consideration
that the Canadians or anyone else could upstage the home side’s impressive record. In
18 Olympic sprint relays, the United States
had won every one of the 14 times it finished the race, 11 of those times with world
records. Three times, U.S. runners dropped
87
batons and were disqualified. In 1980, the
country boycotted the Moscow Olympics.
Even on Saturday, after the Canadians had
shown themselves viable contenders with
Carlton Chambers of Mississauga running
the leadoff leg in the first two rounds, it was
apparent they were being discounted.
“All that chaos made us more focused,”
Bailey said. “I was extremely confident.
There was no mention or concern on their
part that we were world champions last
year, or that Bruny and I won silver and gold
at the world-championship 100 metres.
“We said to ourselves, ‘No matter what
you win, they [the United States] aren’t going to give you respect.’ “
Bailey said the team discounted the possible addition of Lewis, even though he’d
lobbied for the job. His credentials were
impeccable -- six world-record finishes. But
he’d been slow this season, last at the U.S.
100-metre trials, and he’d already guaranteed himself a positive finish to his lengthy
career with a record-tying ninth Olympic
gold.
“Carl’s a better businessman than that,”
Bailey said. “He wants to stay golden, and
there wasn’t another gold available to him.”
Some of the U.S. track team, especially
Mitchell, didn’t know how to deal with losing a relay race. The overconfidence had
been evident in a statement by relay sub Jeff
Williams that the Americans were ready to
“kick some Canadian ass.”
“That just told us we were in their brains,”
Bailey said.
Said Mitchell after the race: “I am not
defeated. I am a United States of America
track and field team member. We were not
defeated; we were not beaten; we were just
second.” He said had no animosity toward
the Canadians. “We’re just as proud of them
as if they were Americans.”
Marsh had it in a little better perspective:
“To be honest, we got barbecued.”
Drummond, who put a U.S. flag around
his neck and walked around the track to celebrate his silver, walked up to the Canadian
press contingent and hollered “Surprise,
surprise. . . . You all underestimated the Canadian team. We didn’t.”
Chambers, who did not run in the final
because of a pulled stomach muscle incurred in the men’s 200 and aggravated in
the two early rounds of the relay, also was
awarded a gold medal for his duty.
88
There’s a very sad aspect to that, the immediate elimination of the site where five
Canadian runners combined their talents
through the rounds and dealt defeat to the
haughty Americans for the first time at the
Olympic Games.
It’s not just sport history that gets rubbed
out, it’s personal history, too. Bruny Surin,
who handed the baton and the lead over to
Bailey for the last sizzling 8.95 seconds, has
two daughters, Kimberley-Ann, who turned
two years old while he was at the Olympics, and Katherine, born six months ago.
Bailey’s daughter Adrienna turns two this
month.
They’re far too young to have any concept
of what it was that their fathers and their
teammates did here. It would be fitting, if
one day the champions of the 1996 centennial Olympic Games could bring their children to the place where they proved themselves the best of 197 nations, when all the
world was watching:
“There, see Lane 6? That’s where your
daddy ran. The night was Aug. 3, 1996. The
night was hot and the air was thick. The
crowd was packed and buzzing, expecting
one more great American win -- expecting
everything except what they were about to
get. Somehow, all the American press and
NBC had forgotten -- Canadians were world
champions in the relay and that we were
first and second in the 100 metres in 1995.
Only memories will survive
Olympic demolition crews
JAMES CHRISTIE
AT L A N TA
D
awn breaks and Olympic Atlanta is
no more. The last act of the Centennial Games is erasure. There’s an official
Olympic demolition crew, already at work,
taking a sledge hammering to the places
where dreams were forged. Hold on to your
memories.
The tents and stalls that cloaked an important Olympic anniversary in tawdriness
are coming down, with the small-time hustlers of shirts and kitsch never realizing the
bonanza they envisioned. The velodrome
is being dismantled and the owner of the
boards that made up the track -- Curt Harnett’s and Brian Walton’s track -- hopes to
fetch $650,000 (U.S.). Much of the centennial Olympic stadium’s stands -- including the
place where a tremor-ridden Muhammad
Ali touched people’s hearts and touched off
the flame that lit the sport world -- are being demolished to convert it into a baseball
park.
And the running track where Donovan
Bailey and the Canadian 4 x 100-metre relay
team ran into history is being ripped up, cut
into little pieces and being sold for $19.96
(U.S.) a slice.
89
Before the race the U.S. coach guaranteed
victory on TV. Guaranteed it! Take it to the
bank and cash it, he said.
“So we were underdogs, one more time.
It made your skin tingle, made your heart
pound. The exchanges of that little aluminum stick had to work just right. But we
believed in each other in every step of every round. We knew we could do it, even if
nobody else did. By the end of the second
leg, it was won. We were fast as a whirlwind,
faster than anyone else in the whole world.
And 83,000 people were on their feet, making the sound of thunder, and people were
handing down Maple Leaf flags to us. There
we were in our Canada uniforms, hugging
and laughing, and there were the Americans
looking at each other, sucking wind and
wondered what the hell that taste was in
their mouths. It was defeat.”
There will be no Lane 6 to show the kids.
Just a white chalk third-base line in a baseball park with no history, but a lot of corporate boxes. When the outer stands are
brought down and an infield is created for
the still unnamed stadium there will be no
place for the cauldron where the Olympic
flame burned for a fortnight. Neither the
Atlanta Braves, who will occupy this House
of Payne (Billy), nor the Atlanta-Fulton
County Recreation Authority wants to take
responsibility for it.
So the very symbol of the Games -- forget
that it looks like a french-fry container from
a hamburger chain -- will get dismantled
too.
The Olympics will all be gone from here
in a matter of days, without much left to
remember them by. Atlanta isn’t destined
to be remembered fondly as one of the great
Olympic cities. It isn’t Rome or Mexico City
or even Montreal -- which also ripped up its
running track but kept the name Olympic
Stadium, the Olympic pool and major training sites such as the Claude Robillard Centre
as Olympic legacies. The Games will be gone
from here with barely a trace except for the
thousands of unsold mascots, the unloved
and jellybean-like Izzy (The full-sized, walking Izzy put in a rare appearance at the
main press centre last week. He was bitten
by a bomb-sniffer dog).
It’s all about to vanish in Atlanta. The
foreigners and their funny sports will go
away and Georgians can get back to things
they understand and appreciate, like college
football and pickup trucks and a good tomahawk chop.
But, before it’s all packed away and the
track gets sold off bit by bit, someone remember to save a piece of that finish line for
Donovan Bailey, Bruny Surin, Glenroy Gilbert, Robert Esmie and Carlton Chambers.
They owned it two nights ago. They should
own it forever.
90
2000
Sydney
Canada’s champion
free spirit
enough personality to give his country a
reason to love his sport.
Anyone who watched the Olympic triathlon had to be impressed with Whitfield’s
spirit. He provided enough images to last
two Olympics. There was his relentless pursuit of the leader in the 10-kilometre run.
There was the moment he caught Vuckovic
and passed without so much as an elbow
in the side. There was Whitfield raising a
clenched fist in the air in his final sprint to
glory. Then there was Whitfield bending
over and kissing the podium before stepping on it and into sports history.
And then there was the uncontrollable
sobbing as the Canadian national anthem
was played and the gold medal hung from
his neck like the most precious of jewels.
Those moments will live forever as a
reminder of one man’s incredible performance in arguably the most demanding
of Olympic events. Whitfield said he chose
those moments to remember the people
who had helped him along the way, such
as his parents, Geoff and Linda, his friends
and training partners and his coaches Barrie Shepley and Lance Watson. Those who
know him best insist that’s not surprising.
They say that’s just Simon being Simon.
“He’s a hyperactive kid with a huge heart,”
Watson said. “He’s always goofing around
and having fun. But when it’s time to work
he has the focus of an Olympic champion.”
ALLAN MAKI
SYDNEY
T
he new star of the Canadian Olympic
team is a self-described chatterbox
who once wanted to dig a tunnel from his
Australian all-boys’ school to the all-girls’
school across the way. He’s also a 154-pound
joy buzzer who loves to tease his friends
and keeps things looser than a pair of clown
pants.
You know how Simon Whitfield prepared
for the biggest race of his life, the men’s
triathlon at the Sydney Olympics? He sat
in the boat that carried him and the other
athletes to the Sydney Harbour and noticed
things were getting a little too tense for his
liking. So he decided to lighten the mood.
He started elbowing the guy sitting next
to him, Germany’s Stephan Vuckovic. Later,
he wrapped Switzerland’s Reto Hug in a
headlock and gave him a noogie. Before the
race began, he reached over to one of his rivals and gave him a nipple tweak and a grin.
Then Whitfield went out and leg-whipped
himself to a gold medal as if it was meant to
be. And maybe it was. Maybe the guy with
the need to kibitz was more than the best
choice to win the Olympic triathlon. Maybe
he was the right choice. The runner with
93
“I watched him and Vuckovic elbowing
each other on the boat, and then I saw the
two of them sitting there at the podium [for
the postrace news conference],” Shepley
said. “It was so perfect. It was almost like it
was destined.”
Whitfield’s story is full of quirks and coincidences, the likes of which make you
shake your head in wonder. Take the race
itself. Whitfield, 25, almost crashed twice
during the cycling portion. His last skidding
recovery took place at the same spot where
Canadian Carol Montgomery had fallen the
day before. When Whitfield first got on his
bike at the start of the 40-kilometre race, he
was in 27th place. When he got off his bike,
he was 24th.
While running in a suit that was too small
and hadn’t arrived until the night before, he
motioned to the fans to cheer louder. At one
point, he told himself, “I’m in second place
at the Olympics. I’d be happy with a silver
medal. Silver’s cool.”
Then he ripped past his buddy Vuckovic
for gold not far from where he had celebrated with thousands of other Australians
in 1993 when Sydney was first awarded the
Summer Games.
Even Whitfield shook his head at that
little oddity.
“It all came together,” he said. “I don’t
know how to describe it, but I was here
when they announced the Games were
coming and now I’m here celebrating my
gold medal. To win here made it even more
perfect. I couldn’t have asked for anything
better. This was the race I had been hoping
for all my life.”
Whitfield’s life, specifically the past eight
years, has been spiced with curious twists.
At 17, he decided he wanted to be the best
in the world at something and that the best
place to do it was not in his hometown of
Kingston, Ont., but rather at his dad’s alma
mater, the Knox Grammar School in Sydney
(school motto: Act Like a Man).
Geoff Whitfield, an Australian-born scientist for Dupont, gave his son the green light,
then sent him overseas where Simon soon
learned Knox was an all-boys’ school, hence
the plots to tunnel his way to the nearby
girls’ school.
The decision to go to a boarding school
in Australia helped hone Whitfield’s interests and provided him with discipline. As a
teenager, his free-spirited ways and sloppy
habits crawled under his father’s skin like
a four-foot sliver. Tension grew. Leaving
seemed like a good idea at the time.
“[Simon] was mischievous,” said his
mother, Linda, a Toronto native. “I have a
husband who comes into a house and likes
to see things in places where they should
be. And Simon tended to be Mr. Dropsy. And
with all his equipment, there were things all
over the house.”
94
“It took a lot of adjustments on both
sides,” said his father Geoff. “I take a disciplined approach to life and Simon’s very
creative. His intuition is enormous. The
things he responds to I don’t hear.”
Simon’s slumping grades came in loud
and clear to his father. A professional academic, Geoff Whitfield wanted his son to set
high goals and strive to achieve them. The
father knew there were risks involved in
sending a 17-year-old kid to a foreign country he had never visited before. The results,
however, were almost immediate.
“He started doing his homework,” Geoff
Whitfield said. “More importantly, he was
challenged at Knox to represent Knox in
their athletic competitions as an athlete
with expectations he would win. He called
me once and said, ‘They expect me to win
all the time.’ I’d like to say I’m sympathetic
but I said, ‘Welcome to the real world.’ “
As Simon Whitfield matured, the real
world seemed to suit him pretty well. He
earned notoriety at Knox for being the kid
with the poor tan and the funny accent who
never stopped talking. He played a variety
of sports but excelled at triathlon and was
good enough to be considered for a spot on
the Australian junior team.
When he returned to Canada, it wasn’t
long before Whitfield settled in Victoria,
where he could train and develop his swimming, cycling and running skills. Always shy
of money, he stayed at the homes of people
who were friends of friends. He stocked
shelves at a corner store, but mostly he
trained and dreamed of being someone special like his heroes Wayne Gretzky and Sir
Edmund Hillary, the man who scaled Mount
Everest.
Eventually, the results began to trickle in
-- a third-place finish at the 1999 Pan American Games, a first-place finish at the Canadian triathlon championships followed by a
second-place finish at a World Cup in Brazil.
For the Olympics, he was considered a
top-10 finisher at best. Just before he hit the
water to start the race, Shepley pulled him
aside and said, “You’re an entertainer and
this is the biggest stage in the world. Go do
it.”
“I just had such good preparation this
year,” said Whitfield, whose victory was
cheered by virtually everyone on the triathlon circuit. “I did everything right. I covered
all the details. My dad told me gold is in the
details. That’s why I think I won. I said all
week that I just wanted to hear our anthem.
I can’t tell you how proud I am to be a Canadian. I always wanted to see my flag, our
flag, up at the top of the podium and at the
top of the pole.
“I came here [at 17] enamoured with the
idea of coming to a foreign country and being an Australian, and went home four years
later realizing that I loved this place but I
95
love Canada because I’m from there and it’s
home. The biggest thing it made me appreciate is how fantastic Canada is.”
His parents travelled to Australia to watch
him race. His mother sat in the stands and
used binoculars to follow him around the
course. His dad was so nervous he couldn’t
sit still. He had bought a book of poetry to
keep himself distracted during the race but
that wasn’t enough to calm his nerves.
“There’s something surreal about it, I felt,”
Geoff Whitfield said. “Him winning here
added to everything that’s gone on. I don’t
know if I expected it. It was pretty tough [to
watch].”
As for Simon, he was so into his final lap
around the streets next to the Sydney Opera
House that he looked into the crowd to see
friends and his Australian training partner
Greg Bennett. Whenever he saw someone
he recognized, he gave a thumbs up and a
quick wink.
“He’s well liked, a total clown,” said Paul
Regensburg, who works with the national
training centre in Victoria and called Whitfield’s race for CBC television. “He’s the full
package -- a young guy, energetic. As soon as
he gets home, he’ll be touring schools on his
own and showing kids his medal. That’s the
way he is.”
“Sometimes we clash,” Shepley added.
“The other day, he called me and said, ‘I put
my bag and my bike on a truck and sent it
down. Can you guys get it?’ I mean, this is
his racing bike. Other athletes wouldn’t let
it out of their sight. They’d have six people
looking after it. He puts it on a truck and
hopes everything works out. That’s the kind
of guy he is.”
He’s also the guy who was given a rousing
cheer and a flag-waving welcome at an evening postmedal reception. Someone handed
Whitfield a bottle of champagne and he not
only opened it, he sprayed the house with it.
The new star of the Canadian Olympic
team was wearing his gold medal when he
did it and the best 24-karat grin you’ve ever
seen.
96
2004
Athens
A golden moment
specialty, the women’s 100-metre hurdles
(coupled with the elimination of her greatest rival, American Gail Devers) some of
the gloom lifted, and after eight full days of
competition, it felt as if Canada’s Games had
truly begun.
“It takes a lot of hard work and a lot of
dedication,” Mr. Shewfelt said afterwards. “I
hope it inspires a lot of gymnasts at home
and even a lot of young athletes. Anything is
possible.”
Purists and historians will love the fact
that his is one of the classic events, not one
of the gimmicky add-on sports designed to
lure television viewers.
Everyone else can simply wallow in the
moment and let loose a great big sigh of
relief. After an uninspiring first week, albeit
one carrying relatively low expectations,
matters were going to take a turn for Canada
yesterday, one way or the other.
In fact, they turned one way, then the
other.
The men’s eights were viewed as the
country’s closest thing to a clear-cut, sure
thing, bet-the-house medal lock. The crew
came to the Olympics undefeated in more
than a year, and even after losing to the
Americans by a hair in their preliminary
heat, they cruised comfortably to the final,
where everyone assumed they’d battle for
the gold.
Instead, they were never really in the run-
STEPHEN BRUNT
AT H E N S
F
inally these Olympic Games have a
hometown face, that of a 22-year-old
from Calgary with a brush cut and a little
metal bolt through his brow.
Thanks to Kyle Shewfelt’s magnificent
minute of tumbling, the flag has been raised
and the anthem -- where did they find that
awful recording? -- has been played.
“[It] sounded like the Canadian anthem
after ouzo,” said Hélène Lapointe, a spokeswoman with the Canadian Olympic Committee, which hopes to find an improved
version in case Canada strikes gold again before the Games end. “Usually, the organizing
committee sends us the music for approval,
as they did in Sydney, but it didn’t happen
in Athens.”
Just a few hours before, there had been
tears and hand-wringing and forced smiles
from sports bureaucrats on what began as a
terrible Olympic day for Canada.
In the morning, one of the country’s best
medal hopes in these Games, the men’s
eights in rowing, shockingly finished their
final far back in fifth place.
With Mr. Shewfelt’s breakthrough, the
first medal ever for a Canadian in artistic
gymnastics, and with Perdita Felicien’s
easy qualification for the semi-finals in her
99
ning, falling nearly a boat length behind the
U.S. crew after 500 metres, and finishing the
race as the fifth of six shells, more than nine
seconds behind the gold medalists.
That result sent shockwaves through a
Canadian team which to that point had
claimed just three medals -- two silver and
one bronze -- 40th on the list of competing
countries.
The Canadian Olympic Committee had
scheduled a mid-Games press conference
yesterday afternoon, no doubt anticipating
being able to finally celebrate an unqualified triumph. They were caught flatfooted,
left to laud some fine efforts from earlier in
the Games (the women’s épée fencing team
finishing fourth, for instance), before the
conversation turned into the familiar pitch
for more government funding for athletes.
“This is a serious game here,” COC president Michael Chambers said. “If you want to
keep up with the pack, you’re going to have
to put your foot on the accelerator.”
The COC’s chief operating officer Chris
Rudge spoke of a study from the Salt Lake
City Games that contained troubling, puzzling statistics about clutch performances,
or the lack thereof. Of athletes ranked in the
top five in the world in their event heading
into the Olympics, more than half of those
from the major sports nations won a medal.
Canada’s “conversion rate,” on the other
hand, was only 29 per cent. No one on the
dais seemed to have a clue why.
Still, apparently a few of Canada’s athletes
here are somehow thriving in the current
cash-poor environment and delivering
when it matters most.
Ms. Felicien, the defending world champion, who has actually trained as a collegiate athlete in the United States, looked
extremely comfortable finishing as the
second-fastest qualifier for the 100-metre
hurdles semi-finals, which will be run today.
As significantly, Ms. Devers collapsed and
slid under the first hurdle during her heat,
laid low by a calf injury suffered during
training. With Ms. Devers gone, Ms. Felicien
is now the clear favourite to win the gold
medal tomorrow.
The rest of the evening yesterday wasn’t
all hearts and flowers. After a promising
start, high-jumper Mark Boswell missed his
first attempt at 2.32 metres, bailed out and
jumped under the bar on his second, and on
his final attempt, clipped it with his ankle,
finishing the competition, and his Olympic
career, in seventh place. Kevin Sullivan, one
of the country’s greatest middle-distance
runners ever failed to qualify for the final of
the 1,500 metres, an event in which he finished fifth in Sydney.
And diver Émilie Heymans, a bronze
medalist earlier in these Games, had moved
up to second place in the women’s 10-metre platform event before the final dive, in
100
position to challenge for the gold. Instead,
she recorded the lowest marks of any of the
12 competitors, and finished a heartbreaking fourth. Without the joy provided by
Mr. Shewfelt, that would have been doubly
crushing.
Now there’s hope in the fact that he’ll be
back in competition today, attempting to a
win a second medal, this time in the vault.
With that, with Ms. Felicien, with the men’s
baseball team headed to the medal round,
with other possibilities remaining, the story
of Canada in Athens is still to be written.
Kayaker’s solitary road to
the Athens Olympics shows
why sport deserves to matter more in Canada
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD
SCHINIAS, GREECE
A
t first blush, the tanned young man
holding court at the Olympic flatwater racing course here yesterday was only
what he appears: a genetically blessed,
driven and successful Canadian athlete.
The bronze medal hanging around his
neck, from his courageous go-for-it strategy
in the 1,000-metre K-1 race, where he roared
out to an early lead and then fiercely hung
on to stay in the top three, was proof of that.
But Adam van Koeverden is more than
the sum of his parts, however magnificent
they are. His road to the Athens Olympics
sheds some light upon the fragmented Canadian sports system and even, in a larger
sense, upon the merit of sport.
Mr. van Koeverden is one of the talented
kids who might have gone undiscovered
because of Canada’s haphazard way of seeking, finding and training potential highperformance athletes and who, even in his
preparation for Athens, had to travel first
to Florida and then to Norway -- largely on
his own ticket -- to get the competition he
101
needed.
If he always had the raw ingredients, he
first had to find the sport that was right for
him, and then he had to learn how to become great.
Had he been a hockey player, he would
have been spotted by a scout, snapped up
and wooed to a top organization before he
turned 10. But he wasn’t, and it was largely
accidental that as a 14-year-old he found
kayaking and it found him.
It was a little ad in his local newspaper,
the Oakville Beaver, that snared Mr. van
Koeverden.
Placed by the Burloak Canoe Club, the ad
was seeking youngsters interested in elitelevel sport and read in part, “Do you want to
go to the Olympics?”
Mr. van Koeverden offers evidence that
Canada, as his coach and friend Scott Oldershaw says, has “the stock to perform with
anybody” -- a sufficient amount of naked
talent, in other words -- despite a national
culture which, in Mr. Oldershaw’s view, is
typified by the fact that CBC’s coverage of
the Games was last week attracting an audience of only a million.
“I see the biggest problem as the culture,”
Mr. Oldershaw was saying yesterday. “That,
more than anything, more than the money
or the facilities or the coaching.” But for
a couple of weeks every couple of years,
“there’s a lack of interest” and a lack of un-
derstanding of what sport contributes to a
society.
What really hurts the amateur athlete,
and rubs off on him, Mr. Oldershaw said, is
“the real apathy. I felt it myself, when I was
an athlete. People would ask me what I did,
and when I told them, they’d say, ‘But what
do you really do?’ “
The lack of interest translates in the athletes, Mr. Oldershaw said, as a lack of commitment such that, he said, many are unwilling to work and train as hard as Mr. van
Koeverden: “I don’t see a lot of that in many
Canadians.”
Mr. van Koeverden touched on the same
theme himself, both before his race, when
he essentially said that low expectations
breed poor results, and after it yesterday
when he explained the earlier remark.
“When I said that being happy to be here
is ultra-Canadian, I wasn’t excluding myself,” he said. “I have friends who thought it
would be great if I got to the Olympic trials. Well, that’s a cop-out, to be happy to be
there.”
And there it all is, embodied in one smart
young man who, as his coach acknowledges, is the tiniest bit cocky: the old debate,
dating in the modern era from the 1976
Montreal Olympics, when Canada became
the first host nation in history not to win a
single gold medal at home.
What are Canadians doing wrong? Should
102
the country husband limited resources and
emphasize programs designed to develop
elite-level athletes like Mr. van Koeverden,
or rather those grassroots efforts aimed at
rousing ordinary citizens, particularly children, to get off their increasingly too substantial behinds?
But the better question, and the one less
often asked, is: Why bother?
Consider, as part of the answer, what Liz
McDougall of Calgary said in an e-mail to
me this week.
She was writing in response to a story
about the Canadian women wrestlers, one
of whom, Tonya Verbeek, won a silver medal here. Mrs. McDougall watched the team’s
journey, she said, through her daughter
Laura, who was coached by former world
champion Christine Nordhagen and her
husband, Leigh Vierling.
“They have changed my daughter’s
life,” Mrs. McDougall said, leaving it to the
19-year-old to describe how.
“Athletes learn what it is to set goals,” Ms.
McDougall said, “and how to work toward
them . . . how to be coached and accept
feedback and process that information . . .
how to be organized, prepared and diligent
. . . [how to look] at the smallest of details
while keeping the big picture in mind . . .”
Most of all, she said, “An athlete gains the
ability to put things in perspective . . . if you
don’t learn how to take disappointment and
achievement, and put them in perspective,
you will inevitably be unable to get up every
day and put your body through the gruelling practices, early mornings and in the
case of wrestling, the daily pummellings. It
would be too hard.”
And these grateful words, remember,
come from a young woman who didn’t get
to Athens.
Mr. van Koeverden, who did, was saying
much the same thing.
He remembered how his maternal
grandpa, Elmer Bokrossy, had bought him
his first sprint-racing paddle, this when he
was in and out of the hospital a great deal
but wanted some tangible way to show his
grandson he believed in him.
Mr. Bokrossy, a Hungarian, had been a
marvellous athlete himself -- a fencer and
a swimmer -- but his athletic prime coincided with the Second World War. Mr. van
Koeverden’s mom, Beata, believes her dad
might have made it to the Olympics, that
he was good enough, but he never had the
chance Adam did.
Mr. Bokrossy died six years ago, and he
was clearly in his grandson’s thoughts yesterday, one of those -- when in the final half
of the race, his mind was desperately seeking inspiration -- who would have wanted
him “to go for it.”
What he loved about kayaking right away
was the opportunity “to really improve ev-
103
ery day, the challenge of being able to climb
that ladder. It’s a very exciting experience,
to find something you can improve at, and
embrace, to be by yourself and make yourself better. It’s an awesome feeling.”
Mr. van Koeverden is just 22. Brent McMahon, a Victoria-based triathlete who this
week finished that difficult event despite a
damaged tendon, is a year older.
He spoke of “the epic adventure” of his
last year spent training with two friends,
Sean Bechtel and Paul Tichelaar, who actually moved at their own expense to join him
in Victoria to help him.
It is the sort of selflessness that sport
breeds: Mr. van Koeverden spent five weeks
in Norway last year, living in a cramped
one-bedroom apartment with his greatest
rival, Erik Larsen, and his girlfriend, all so he
could learn at the feet of a master.
Mr. van Koeverden was finally kicked out
of the Norwegian program when he became
too good: “dangerous,” the head man called
him. But that Mr. Larsen was generous
enough to have embraced his young competitor -- not only in Norway, but also a year
earlier in Florida, when Mr. van Koeverden
trained with him every day -- speaks to the
mutual respect between two fierce athletes.
It was Mr. Larsen, 28, who took the gold
medal in Mr. van Koeverden’s race yesterday.
If sport is judged by the best of the ath-
letes it produces, it’s inarguable that it
builds better people, who are likely, as Mr.
Oldershaw said, “to make for a better community.” Athletes learn to share, strive and
succeed; that failure one day doesn’t mean
failure the next; they discover their limits,
and how to either raise them through hard
work, or to circumvent them with experience.
As Ms. McDougall said, “All these things
help in sport, but they also set you up for
facing all aspects of life. They make you a
better employee, student, daughter, mother
and friend than you may otherwise have
been.”
That’s why Mr. van Koeverden believes
that corporate Canada should get more involved in supporting athletes: It is, in effect,
in their own best interests.
The $1,100 monthly maximum that Sport
Canada gives to its “carded” elite often
doesn’t even cover their expenses.
The middle-class women in my recreational running group are more pampered
(with regular massages and trips to doctors and podiatrists) and have more toys
(orthotics for bad feet, sophisticated heart
monitors, the best shoes) than many Canadian Olympians. Granted, we pay for all this
ourselves, but neither do we represent our
country.
Mr. McMahon, for instance, is trapped in
a vicious circle. He needs to maintain his
104
world ranking and train full-time in order
to keep his status as a carded athlete, which
pays him $500 a month. It costs more than
that to travel to the international meets, so
he goes to more of them trying to win prize
money. The more racing he does, the more
vulnerable he is to overuse injuries.
If he didn’t live at home with his parents,
in Victoria near the triathlon headquarters,
Mr. McMahon would have needed a job to
afford an apartment, and if he had had a
job, he wouldn’t have been able to train as
he did and probably wouldn’t have made it
at all.
There are those who argue that Canadians
care only about hockey, and that the current
system -- whereby many of our most successful non-hockey athletes are, like Mr. van
Koeverden, fundamentally self-made, naturally occurring wonders who will appear on
the national horizon with or without programs of excellence -- is good enough.
Maybe, at that, it is. But I’ll tell you one
thing, and bear in mind that I say it as one
who loves the national game. The highest
levels of professional sport, even hockey, do
not always build especially attractive human beings.
I remember a few weeks ago, before I
left for Greece, talking to a well-known pro
hockey man about the David Frost and Mike
Danton story. He told me about a player
who is one of several sons, and whose father
recently remarked that though of course he
loved his National Hockey League star son
dearly, years of big money and pampering
-- everything done for him but his clothes
laid out -- had changed him, and left him
less self-reliant, less well-rounded and less
thoughtful than his brothers.
That isn’t true of the young men and
women who have been in Athens, for these
past weeks, in your name. They’ve been
changed for the better. And that’s why it’s
worthwhile.
105
2008
Beijing
and discovered she had the aptitude and
attitude to succeed. She competed internationally while attending Simon Fraser University. She tried to qualify for the Canadian
Olympic team of 2004, but failed to make
the cut.
Instead of quitting, Huynh dedicated
herself to making it to Beijing. She moved
to Calgary, trained with national women’s
coach Leigh Vierling and began working her
way into contention. When she qualified for
the Olympics, her parents made plans to be
there, too.
“I am very proud of her,” Huynh’s father,
Viem, told a Vancouver newspaper. “Her
work so hard on the path. Now she make
something here. Canada play larger part for
her to make it. I’m very happy.”
Asked whether being in China had made
the experience even more special, Viem
said: “I don’t think about it because, you
know, now I’m in Canada for almost 30
years. I’m a Canadian now.”
Huynh’s parents arrived in Canada in
the late 1970s. Trinh, the mother, was born
in Vietnam; Viem was born in China, but
moved to Ho Chi Minh City when he was 3.
The two met and married there and had two
children before deciding to flee the country.
They were sponsored by the United
Church in Hazelton and settled as one of
the few Chinese families in the community
of fewer than 400 people. Recently, the
Huynh’s victory both
physical and emotional
ALLAN MAKI
BEIJING
I
t was the most splendid of moments:
the gold medalist standing atop the podium and crying to the strains of O Canada
while her parents, two Vietnam refugees
wearing Go Carol T-shirts, watched from the
stands, the proudest of Canadians.
Carol Huynh broke the 24-karat barrier
for the true north strong and free on Saturday by defeating a Japanese opponent she
had wrestled before and never beaten. Her
match in the 48-kilogram class at the stately
China Agricultural University Gymnasium
was decisive and powerful, both physically
and emotionally. Her story was just as good.
Born in Canada to parents who fled their
country only to land in Hazelton, B.C.,
Huynh grew up knowing the value of perseverance.
“They did everything,” the 27-year-old
said of her parents, who worked a variety of
jobs (waitress, marketer, dock worker and
sawmill worker) before retiring. “My dad did
all kinds of odd jobs in Vietnam, sold little
trinkets. I’m pretty sure I learned my work
ethic from them.”
Huynh took up wrestling in high school
108
Huynhs sold their family business, the Bulkley Valley Motel, in part so they could come
to China.
What they saw here from their daughter
didn’t disappoint them.
Huynh got stronger as her day-long event
progressed. In the gold-medal match, she
faced Chiharu Icho, the three-time world
champion and silver medalist from the Athens Olympics in 2004.
Rather than waiting for Icho to attack,
Huynh went after her rival, scoring a backbreaking three-point takedown in the opening round. When the second round also
ended in her favour, Huynh was awarded
the victory in convincing fashion.
“I knew I had to set the pace,” she said.
“I’d wrestled her three or four times [and
lost]. When I took her out of bounds for
three points, at that point I knew I had her.
... I wrestled my way and it worked.”
Soon after the Canadian anthem was
played for Huynh, teammate Tonya Verbeek
wrestled for the bronze medal in the 55-kg
class. An Olympic veteran and silver medalist at Athens, Verbeek had to block out her
emotions for Huynh and go to work.
She did it well enough to beat Ida-Theres
Nerell of Sweden in two rounds.
“I used it for motivation,” Verbeek said of
Huynh’s win.
There were others in Canada who felt
the same watching Huynh win, her parents
cheer and their daughter cry.
109
Zero to seven in 24
glorious hours
True, the haul is still one medal shy of
American swimmer Michael Phelps’s singlehanded total of eight golds.
In fact, if he got to count them in a separate column, Phelps the nation would be
alone in second place, handily ahead even
of the rest of his own country and behind
only host China.
But the Canadian seven suffice to put an
end to what Iain Brambell, one of the lightweight men’s four who got bronze, yesterday described as the house of pain that is
“the wooden nickel outside of the medals.”
It was a glorious weekend, with elements
and emotions enough to gladden the heart
and stir the self-referential Canadian imagination - right down to Adam Kreek of the
mighty eights reminding his fellow citizens
that although their gold was won on a humid summer afternoon in China’s capital
city, it was earned in a bloody winter’s work
on near-frozen ponds, with coaches going
ahead in their boats to break up ice, and
snowflakes nearly blinding the athletes.
“You can be a robot on the day [of the
race],” said Mr. Kreek, who was jumping
out of his skin, and briefly the eights’ sleek
yellow boat, with joy. “It’s when no one’s
paying attention, and all the eyes are closed,
and it’s you and the dark water that it’s
won.”
The eights and other Canadian crews who
came within a hair of qualifying for Beijing
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD
BEIJING
O
kay, so it wasn’t Ten Days that Shook
the World, the book about the 1917
October Revolution in Russia.
But the 24 hours and 58 minutes that
changed Canada’s Olympics - from the time
Dave Calder and Scott Frandsen turned in
a near-perfect race in the men’s pair and
broke the jinx to the moment yesterday that
the men’s rowing eights charged first across
the finish line and straight for redemption
from a crushing fifth-place finish in Athenswill have to do.
Going into last weekend, Canada had not
won a single medal in seven days of competition at the Beijing Olympics.
At home, the sports media were howling
for blood, the polls were showing that the
majority of Canadians were disappointed
with the team’s performance, and the usual
anguished debate over amateur sports funding (or the paucity of it) was raging.
But coming out of the weekend, the country’s athletes had won seven medals - a gold,
a silver and two bronzes on the water, a
gold and a bronze on the rassling mat and
a bronze in the swimming pool - vaulting
Canada ahead of Togo et al to 18th spot in
the medal rankings, only two places behind
the Canadian Olympic Committee’s prediction of a top-16 finish.
110
(and whom Mr. Kreek thanked), worked
out on Victoria’s Elk Lake “in snow, in hail.
Our slides were frozen, our bodies were
frozen, we couldn’t see for the snow, and we
cracked ice on the lake: We went out every
day.”
It was also at the Shunyi Olympic RowingCanoeing Park on the east side of Beijing
that the lightweight men’s fours gutted out
the last 500 metres of a dogfight of a race
to win bronze for their gravely ill Danish
coach, Bent Jensen.
Mr. Jensen, who is suffering from pancreatic cancer and receiving chemotherapy
here, wasn’t able to ride his bike alongside
the boats, as the coaches usually do, but
instead watched the race on closed-circuit
television, in his new wheelchair.
“Since he came here in 2006, we’ve had
two fourth-place finishes at the world championships,” stroke Liam Parsons of Thunder
Bay said. “It was a bit disappointing.
“And with Bent being sick, we really wanted to make sure he didn’t leave his home
country and his family there for nothing.”
As assistant lightweight coach Howie
Campbell, pushing Mr. Jensen to the boathouse, said softly, “It’s pretty inspirational
for those guys; he’s the guy who’s fighting
for his life.”
Mr. Brambell said Mr. Jensen actually
“won a gold and a bronze,” since the core
of the Danish crew he built into three-time
Olympic medalists during his long stint in
his home country was in the winning boat.
The 60-year-old Dane, Mr. Brambell said,
is “the only coach to actually have medals
at every Olympics” since lightweight rowing
was introduced in 1996.
Looking jaundiced and thin, but with eyes
still bright and fierce, Mr. Jensen smiled
when Mr. Brambell’s remarks were repeated
to him. “But I am on the Canadian side
now,” he said.
Over at the China Agricultural University
Gymnasium, the new Olympic champion
in the freestyle wrestling 48-kilogram class,
Carol Huynh, is the child of Vietnamese
boat people, refugees who were sponsored
by the United Church in Hazelton, B.C.
It was there in the hardscrabble little
town, where the family lived on a native
reserve, that Ms. Huynh grew up.
With her father Viem and mother Trinh in
the crowd to see her defeat Japan’s Chiharu
Icho for the first time in their several meetings, Ms. Huynh said, “My parents always
worked hard to be able to support the family. ...It is special for them to be here and see
this accomplishment, to see me make my
dream.”
Some of the rowers, veteran coach Al Morrow said, were inspired by the performances
of Ms. Huynh and her fellow wrestler, Tonya
Verbeek, who won bronze in the freestyle
55-kilogram class.
111
“They motivated us,” said Mr. Morrow,
who coached the lightweight women’s
double of Tracy Cameron and Melanie Kok,
who won Canada’s first-ever doubles medal,
a bronze.
And the Saturday silver from Mr. Calder
and Mr. Frandsen, he said, “made believers
of us all.”
The two veterans had hoped to make the
eights, the flagship boat, yet “they came
through with a silver. There’s this kind of
mood in Canada now,” he said.
Ms. Cameron said she and Ms. Kok were
also inspired when they woke up yesterday
morning and learned that Ryan Cochrane
had capped the Canadians’ remarkable
improvement in the pool - where the team
smashed 26 national records and sent swimmers to 10 finals but was still being damned
with the “not good enough” label - with a
concrete prize he could wear around his
neck for his teammates, a bronze in the gruelling 1,500-metre freestyle.
As Mr. Kreek said, “We feed off each other.”
For all in sport that is inherently selfish
- families, new babies and careers are put
firmly in the back seat by the demands of
elite-level training - the Canadian success
stories were variously written by immigrant
courage, hardiness forged in the country’s
geography, and love for a thin man in a
wheelchair.
As Bent Jensen said, he wanted to build
a team, and a team he built - of strapping
young men “who will have a life after, and
be good friends.” The rowers, the Canadians,
the Olympians, brought together in what
Mr. Kreek of London, Ont., called the communion of sports, “the perfect goodness.”
Winning, he said, was grand, astonishing,
unlike any other moment.
“But when I’m 80 years old and I’m walking the shores of Elk Lake, I’ll still have
shivers. So many miles, so much beauty, so
much pain.”
112
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The Summer Olympic Games

Transcription

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