But the feeling of fourth, with the podium so near and yet so far, is always hard to bear
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There is no official colour associated with finishing fourth at the Olympics, but contenders abound.
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Green with envy. Ashen-faced from the effort. Blue for your mood. Red with anger.
Alongside such a hue, there is a tendency to cry, the podium being so near and yet so far. And at some Olympics, when medals have been scarce, Team Canada leadership had little recourse but to slap rose-coloured glasses over those tear-filled eyes and fend off a legion of critics by counting a collection of fourths through eighths as signs of potential and progress.
With 23 Olympic medals already in Canadian hands at Tokyo 2020 — a national record high for a non-boycotted Games — there is no cause to throw any shade at this performance, especially in the pool and at the track. Each venue produced half a dozen medals, a repeat performance from five years ago in Rio.
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“Canadian athletes expect to go to championships and win medals,” said Athletics Canada head coach Glenroy Gilbert, referring specifically to the track and field team. “I was a part of the program when that wasn’t necessarily the case. So I think we’re in a good place.”
He was a Summer Olympian at Seoul 1988, Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000. Canada’s track and field team produced a total of six medals from those four Games, and he was in on one of them, the 4x100m relay gold from Atlanta.
So he knows what it takes to win, how it feels to finish off the podium, and how little can separate one from the other. He has respect and empathy for the Canadian women — Alicia Brown, Madeleine Price, Kyra Constantine and Sage Watson — who finished fourth in the 4×400-metre relay on Saturday night at Tokyo’s National Stadium.
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“Oh my God, what a gutsy performance they had,” said Gilbert. “We didn’t see that one coming, not that fast.”
They ran 3:21.84, a mark that left them a scant .60 seconds away from a podium position, which was their goal, and .63 seconds from the Canadian record of 3:21.21, which would have been a lovely adjunct.
Watson, the 400m hurdler from Medicine Hat, Alta. who ran the anchor, had the team in bronze medal contention for 300 metres, but could not respond as Jamaica’s Candice McLeod sped by her down the stretch. McLeod ran 49.87 seconds to finish fifth in the women’s 400m final, so she’s a phenom.
“That’s the way relays go,” said Gilbert. “Sage led for most of that lap. Swinging off the corner it becomes a bit of a foot race and on this day we lost that one. That time would medal at many of the Olympics in the past. These women stepped up. They really stepped up. It’s heartbreaking.”
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Their time would have fetched bronze in Rio, London, Beijing, Athens, Sydney, Barcelona, L.A. and Moscow; silver in Montreal and gold in Sydney and Munich.
But they were short of the podium in Tokyo, just as Brown and Watson had been in Rio, .55 seconds behind Great Britain who took bronze. Price, Brown and Watson were .47 seconds from the podium at the World Relays in 2019.
They need to find half a second, but for five years it has continued to elude this slowly changing pool of women. The latest quartet all ran good 50-point splits on Saturday, but they don’t have anyone running 48- or 49-point, which is how the USA won right away.
That woman might still be out there; the seven-athlete pool was deep enough that three of them in Tokyo didn’t get a sniff; Natassha McDonald, Noelle Montcalm and Lauren Gale.
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And three years from now in Paris, the Olympic 4×400 team could be entirely different. Athletics Canada believes they are on the right track, and though doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a better result is said to be the very definition of insanity, track and field can be a crazy game. And they only need half a second.
“I think we keep doing what we’re doing,” said Gilbert. “We keep supporting them. We keep building the 4×400 program and their time is going to come.”
Team Canada’s 57-member track and field team came to Tokyo for a good time, several actually, as well as some good throws and jumps. Some of them were so good that no Canadian had ever finished higher at an Olympics. Andre De Grasse won a gold medal in the 200-metres with a Canadian record. Damian Warner set a national record while winning decathlon gold. In men’s and women’s steeplechase, nobody had finished higher at the Games than Matt Hughes (sixth) and Genevieve Lalonde (11th). Evan Dunfee’s bronze medal in the 50km race walk was the best ever, so too Moh Ahmed’s silver in the 5,000m. Malindi Elmore’s ninth-place finish in the women’s marathon is the best at a non-boycotted Games.
This successful showing wraps up with the men’s marathon on Sunday in Sapporo, with Ben Preisner, Cam Levins and Trevor Hofbauer in the field.
“I think the people who were supposed to medal, or at least who we had targeted for a medal, medalled during this meet,” said Gilbert. “Some of them went above and beyond.”
Twitter.com/sportsdanbarnes
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Canadian track and field team "in a good place" after six medals at Tokyo 2020 - National Post
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