August 10, 2004
By JAMES CHRISTIE

Faster, higher . . . defiant

Following the classic metaphor of fallen warriors, Canadian athletes returned home from the Sydney Olympic Games four years ago on their shields.

Fourteen medals, only three of them gold, was a crushingly disappointing performance for one of the richest countries in the world, a plunge from the 22 medals won in Atlanta in 1996. It was seen as a demonstration that sport ranked low on the Canadian government's agenda. Federal funding cutbacks had slashed Canada's sport development, and many of the athletes in Sydney were either old, injured or ill-prepared.

Before the Sydney bodies were even cold, there were dire predictions that the successor team bound for Athens was doomed to further disaster. Being named to the Athens team would be like getting your name on the passenger list for the Titanic.

With the countdown clock to the Athens Games down to its final few ticks, not a lot has changed in the big picture for Canadian sport. The federal government has promised more money for athletes, with the Sport Canada kitty rising to $120-million in 2004-05 from $90-million. But that will be directed at the next generation and likely focused on winter sports as the 2010 Games come to Vancouver.

Nothing came in time to help the Athens mission.

That makes these Games a symbolic end of an era for Canadian athletes. As the Olympics at last come back to the place where they began, it should also signal the end of a period of mediocrity and a new beginning for Canada's approach to sport. Vancouver 2010 provides a focus. The Canadian Olympic Committee has also provided a target — for Canada to be the No..1 medal-winning nation at those Games.

The 267 athletes preparing to march into the 75,000-seat Olympic stadium behind judoka Nicolas Gill aren't defeatist. There's a sense of defiance built into those who made the COC's cut by placing among the top 12 in the world in their respective sports. It's a smaller team than the 311 who marched into Sydney, but the quality is higher. They may come back with more medals — not fewer — than the Sydney crew.

Canadians will get to see world-beaters wearing red and white, with no fewer than six world champions plus World Cup champions and defending Olympic champs. Perdita Felicien, the 100-metre hurdles world champion from Pickering, Ont., makes no bones about going out to win. It's what she does. She's not burdened by the fact people want of her what she wants of herself.

"It's a hat that I wear, that I'm forced to wear, and I don't mind it at all," Felicien said of the pressure that comes with being a world champion. "My approach is: This is what I love to do, it's my job, and it's fun."

Her determination was clear when she was honoured as Canada's athlete of the year last spring.

"I don't want to be a one-hit wonder," she said. "I had so many months of 'maybe it's a fluke' after winning the world outdoor championship in August, 2003. Then I won the world indoors title, and I've beaten Gail Devers, and now I'm ranked No..1. I don't call myself the top dog or the favourite. I'm just going to Athens to try to be the Olympic champion."

Felicien's going to Greece in style with a win in her final pre-Games outing last week and the fastest time in the world this season. She's not the only one with gold-medal potential. Two of the men's rowing crews, drilled hard by coach Mike Spracklen, — the eights and the fours — are defending world champions. So is trampolinist Karen Cockburn, who took a bronze at Sydney. Alexandre Despatie and Emilie Heymans won world championships diving at Barcelona last year and diving could produce three or four medals for Canada.

Whitewater kayaker David Ford, a former world champion, comes to his fourth Olympics as the 2003 World Cup season winner. Caroline Brunet, the flatwater kayaker who was queen of her sport through the 1990s, is determined to get gold to make up for the "disappointment" of silver in 2000. Gill, coming off knee surgery, has won silver and bronze Olympic medals and has been rehabilitating by fighting the best judokas he can find in Japan and Europe.

Simon Whitfield, who got Canada off to a stirring start in Sydney with a win in the inaugural Olympic triathlon, is back and has posted two international wins this year. There's also great medal potential for Canada's top female triathlete, Jill Savege, who learned to deal with the searing heat of the Olympic venue at last year's Athens triathlon.

Another defending gold medalist, wrestler Daniel Igali, returns to the Olympic mat, although his chances of repeating have been shortened by neck surgery and a heavier weight class. A better gold medal chance may reside with Christine Nordhagen-Vierling, a six-time world champion in women's wrestling, which is on the Olympic menu for the first time in Athens. Fencer Sherraine MacKay has a gold and two bronze medals in three World Cup tournaments this year, and gymnast Kyle Shewfelt was a double bronze medalist at the world championships last fall.

The cornerstone Olympic sports of track and field and swimming will not be points of strength. Besides Felicien, Canada's other medal hopeful is high jumper Mark Boswell, who has two world championship medals but comes into the Olympics with a chronic ankle problem in his takeoff leg.

Canadian swimming's status has declined steadily as more and more countries become competitive. If Canadians continue to tread water and fail to get a medal in Athens, there will likely be a call for a major turnover at Swimming Canada.

Canada's sport system remains a patchwork, without good communication or flow from municipal and community level sport, to provincial teams, to national teams. Often, Canada's top performers got to the top by going outside the domestic system. Felicien took the U.S. university scholarship route and would recommend it to others. Rowing Canada looked abroad to get the best coaches to produce results and plucked Spracklen from Britain and Brian Richardson from Australia. Whitfield often trains in Australia, as does Ford, taking advantage of a system that was designed and directed at high performance success.

reprinted with permission