The medals and what-ifs from Rio 2016

The day after the 2016 Olympics in Rio came to a close, Jacques Landry, highperformance director at Cycling Canada, hadn’t yet worked out the big lessons from those Games. It was still early. He and the country’s governing body for cycling were just starting their debriefing phase. They had successes to consider: bronze in the women’s team pursuit and Catharine Pendrel’s hardfought bronze in the women’s cross country race. There were some encouraging showings in events Cycling Canada had considered “soft medal targets,” such as Tara Whitten’s seventh place in the women’s time trial and Tory Nyhaug’s fifth place in the men’s bmx. There was also dissatisfaction.

“I’m a bit disappointed that Allison Beveridge was not able to show Canada what she’s got in the omnium,” Landry said. “She crashed in the scratch race and never really recovered from that. We figured that the gold and silver would be sewn up by Laura Trott and Sarah Hammer, but figured Allison was one of four who could go for bronze.” In the six-event omnium, Beveridge was strongest in the individual pursuit (ninth), time trial (ninth) and flying lap (sixth). She was climbing up in the overall standings until the final event, the points race, in which she finished 17th, bringing her to 11th in the omnium.

“While our Olympic programs come back to Canada with two bronze medals, there are always some what-ifs that pop up that leave you unsettled,” Laundry said. “We always want to do better and we are improving. Now, we recharge the batteries and set our sights on Tokyo. We’ll aim at increasing our cycling medal count in 2020.”