You can call me crazy or just say it's nationalistic pride, but when CBC's Olympic Primetime host Ian Hanomansing announced at midnight last Saturday that Canadians were up for three medals, I stayed up… til 2 am!
In the span of 45 minutes, Canadian athletes won three medals on day 8 of the Beijing Games. It was so worth it to see Carol Huynh win not only Canada's first medal of the Games but Canada's first gold medal in women's wrestling. David Calder and Scott Frandsen won silver in pairs rowing and Tonya Verbeek won the bronze in the 55kg of wrestling.
This was just the beginning…
The following day 18-year old Ryan Cochrane won the silver medal in the 1500 m swim, a couple days after breaking and briefly holding the Olympic record in the heats. The men's eight with cox won the gold medal and the lightweight women's double sculls and the lightweight men's coxless fours both won bronze.
On day 10 Karen Cockburn won silver in the trampoline, adding to her silver from Athens and bronze from Sydney. In Equestrian, Canada placed second in team jumping giving Ian Millar, a 61-year old and 9-time Olympian his first Olympic medal.
Day 11 was another big day for Canadians with Alexandre Despatie winning silver in the 3m springboard, Jason Burnett placing second in trampoline and Priscilla Lopes winning bronze in the 100m hurdles. Simon Whitfield made a gutsy move in the final 200m of the triathlon to also win silver on day 11 to go along with the gold he won in Sydney 2000.
After twelve days of competition Canadians have won 2 gold, 6 silver and 5 bronze medals for a total of 13. There are several medal favorites still to come in the last four days of competition. This surpasses the medal totals in Athens 2004 where Canada won 3 gold, 6 silver and 3 bronze for a total of 12 Olympic medals. Canada had it's top medal count, not including the boycotted 1984 Summer Olympics, in Atlanta with 22 – 3 gold, 11 silver and 8 bronze.
I'll admit, I was starting to wonder if Canada would win a medal. Heck, Togo had a medal already. Yes the Olympics are supposed to be about competing and not the medals. After all, there are only 302 events in 28 sports in total, so a large percentage of the approximately 11,659 athletes won't win any hardware. Plus Canada usually does much better at the Winter Olympics (or seemingly so), yet I still want and hope to see Canadians win medals.
When I was reflecting on the results so far, I started to wonder how many 4th place finishes Canadians had achieved. There was Dylan Armstrong in the shot put, who missed out on bronze by 1 cm, but broke his Canadian record. Mike Brown in the 200m breaststroke, who set a Canadian record in the semi-final. Blythe Hartley in 3m springboard. The Women's Eight with Cox in rowing. Martine Dugrenier in 63kg women's wrestling. Plus the women's softball team missed out on a medal in the final appearance of softball in the Games. A total of six fourth place finishes so far.
Add to that further 18 top 8 finishes (if I didn't miss any) so far. If you take a minute to think about it, a top 8 finish in the world is indeed a stellar accomplishment.