Short track long on drama for Canada
Disqualification is sport at its cruelest
They flip the mental switch almost immediately because they have no choice in short track — the grim finality of a referee’s call at odds with the starter’s gun pointed skyward for the next race.
There’s rarely time to dwell, even after the Olympic dream you chased for four years is wiped out by an infraction so innocuous, so innocent and happenstance that nobody is quite sure it actually led to the heartbreaking disqualification everyone wants you to explain.
That, they will tell you, is short track. At its harshest, to be sure, but that’s the game they all signed up to play, the one they still love despite its random vacillation between cool and cruel.
Canadian women’s team coach Frederic Blackburn isn’t sure, but he thinks they were disqualified from the women’s 3,000-metre relay final because Kim Boutin was too close to a Chinese skater at the finish line. The Sherbrooke, Que., native wasn’t in the race at the time. She was watching Marianne St- Gelais finish the race herself, after all hell had broken loose and the Canadians’ late-race lead had disappeared. The Chinese were duelling the Koreans for apparent gold.
“She was a little bit on the track,” Blackburn said of Boutin, who clearly didn’t do it on purpose. “That’s why we were penalized. What I saw was no contact on that one. She looked inside. But if she’s there, the Chinese can’t do anything if she’s there. That’s why maybe we are penalized, but I’m not sure.”
He’s not sure because nobody in a position to know has told him that’s the case. The video isn’t definitive. But what does it matter?
“Even if we have the result, honestly, nothing will change,” said StGelais, of St-Félicien, Que. “I don’t think we deserve that penalty. … I’m really disappointed because honestly we worked so hard for that, and at the end I still don’t know why we got penalized.”
She was certain, however, that it couldn’t have been related to the way she finished the race. A Korean skater completed an exchange then fell in front of Valerie Maltais, who couldn’t complete her push with Boutin. Maltais of Saguenay (La Baie), Que., was wiped out and took an Italian skater with her. StGelais had to pick up the pieces.
“I came back in the middle because Val went inside the track,” St- Gelais said. “We did everything that we can. I didn’t push Kim because I knew I had to finish the whole race by myself. So it’s not an issue of a track, it’s not an issue of laps or something like that.”
It’s an issue of randomness. That’s often how short track doles out its medals. A Korean falls, a Canadian falls, an Italian falls and the scramble to get from prone on the ice to somewhere on the podium is as insane as anything you will see in sport.
I’ve put in a ton of work into having consistency with this run. So was I expecting a dominant performance? Maybe not so much those words, but I was expecting a consistent and clean performance. It doesn’t feel real yet, but once I see my family and feel the love, it’ll sink in . ... I’m elated. CASSIE SHARPE, halfpipe gold medallist