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The agony and the ecstasy

More medals, more disappointment for Team Canada

It’s hard to sum up these Olympic Games for Team Canada, other than to say it has been an emotional roller coaster that leaves one feeling exhilarated and queasy.

On one hand you have Calgary’s Kyle Shewfelt, edging out the top gymnasts in the world to win a gold medal with an almost flawless floor routine – Canada’s first ever Olympic medal in the sport.

On the other you have Perdita Felicien, the world champion hurdler and a favourite to win a medal. For the first time she can remember she mis-timed her first jump and crashed into the first hurdle, falling sideways into a Russian athlete in the next lane.

On one hand you have the performance of cyclist Lori-Ann Muenzer of Edmonton, who beat the defending Olympic and world champions in the final rounds to claim gold, Canada’s first ever gold medal in a track sprint event.

On the other you have the men’s baseball team’s shocking loss to Cuba in the semi-finals, giving up a one-point lead to open the door for an 8-5 final score. They went on to lose to Japan 11-2 in the consolation final to finish in fourth place.

On one hand you have diver Alexandre Despatie coming back from ninth-place to finish second in the three-metre event, becoming the first Canadian male to medal in an Olympic diving event.

On one hand you have Quebec’s Tonya Verbeek, winning Canada’s first medal – a silver – in the women’s wrestling event. Karen Cockburn also came through in the trampoline event, bettering her bronze in 2000 by winning the silver medal this year.

On the other hand you have the disappointing results by the cycling teams in the time trials event and in the women’s triathlon – neither expected medals, but both expected to do a lot better in the overall standings.

On the other you have the men’s eights rowing squad, the world champions and favourites, melting down in the finals to finish dead last.

On the one hand you have the men’s fours team, which hung in to win a silver medal. On the other, the women’s pairs team just missed the podium by finishing fourth.

Fourth place is where a lot of Canadians are finishing up these days. Shewfelt had the opportunity to add a bronze medal to his tally in the vault on Monday, only to see the judges award Romania’s Marian Dragulescu an impossibly high score after he stumbled on landing his second attempt.

Canadian kayaker David Ford, a strong medal contender with three Olympics under his belt, also finished fourth behind competitors he had previously beaten in World Cup and World Championship competitions.

It’s also disappointing to note that our infamous flag-bearer curse is still potent to Canadian athletes, with judo star Nicolas Gill going out in the opening round. Prior to the loss, Gill had won bronze in Barcelona in 1992 and silver in Sydney in 2000, as well as numerous international titles.

At press time, Canada had just seven medals with only four days of competitions remaining: two gold medals (Lori-Ann Muenzer, Kyle Shewfelt), four silver medals (Alexandre Despatie, Karen Cockburn, Men’s Four Rowing Team, Tonya Verbeek) and one bronze medal (Women’s Synchronized Diving). That ranks Canada 18 th in the medal standings.

Chantal Petitclerc of Montreal also won gold in the women’s 800-metre wheelchair event, but that event isn’t included in the overall medal tallies.

Canada still has strong contenders in synchronized swimming, canoe-kayak events, the men’s triathlon, men’s wrestling, platform diving and the men’s and women’s mountain bike events. There is still a slight chance that Canada will tie its 2000 tally of 14 medals, but we could be looking at our lowest medal tally since 1984.

As always the Games are at risk of being overshadowed by controversies. Three athletes have already had their medals stripped because of drug testing, including a Hungarian discus thrower, a Russsian shot-putter, and a Greek weightlifter. Drugs are also suspected in the case of the Greek sprinters, Kostas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou, who missed their drug test, may have faked a motorcycle accident, and elected not to compete. A Belorusian high jumper and Kenyan boxer have also tested positive for banned substances.

Judging snafus have also impacted the credibility of gymnastics judges. In addition to Shewfelt’s fourth on the vault, the sport is at a loss to explain how a calculation error cost a South Korean the gold in the men’s all-around event. Instead of scoring the South Korean’s parallel bars routine with a difficulty rating of 10.0 they scored it as a 9.9, which cost him the gold in a tight competition where every hundredths of a point mattered.

Two judges have been suspended as a result of the error, but there are no plans to redistribute the medals. The U.S. Olympic Committee, aware that it’s a calculation error and not a scoring error, is discussing the possibility of allowing a second gold medal – but not giving theirs up.

On the political front, Quebec’s sports minister – the only provincial sports minister in Canada – has called on the Canadian Olympic Committee to review the controversial selection criteria that resulted in the smallest Canadian team in recent history.

Before this year, an athlete would have to be ranked in the top-16 in the world to be selected to Team Canada. In 2004, hoping to direct more funding to athletes who had the best chance, the selection criteria was whittled down to athletes who were ranked in the top-12. As a result of more stringent qualification criteria – which many athletes say were announced too late to make a difference – a large number of track and field stars, marathoners and other athletes missed the cutoff.

"It’s not by preventing our athletes from coming to the Olympic Games that they will develop," said Jean-Marc Fournier. "It’s by allowing them to compete in as many international competitions as possible."

Quebec currently provides $18 million a year in funding to provincial athletes, more than any other province.

Former Olympic gold medal swimmer Mark Tewksbury also took a shot at Canada’s elite national training facilities, claiming they were actually hurting the sport. Although the national facilities were expected to create champions, Tewksbury says it has had the opposite effect by taking swimmers out of the club system where they gained their competitive edge.

The Olympic Games will wrap up on Sunday, Aug. 29, followed immediately by the closing ceremonies.

The Paralympic Games get underway on Sept. 9.