Canada tracking in the right direction
Athletics team expects to be stronger by 2020
TORONTO — The groundwork for Derek Drouin’s Olympic gold medal at the Rio Games was laid in 2013.
The year after a disappointing London Olympics — when his bronze in high jumping was Canada’s only medal in track and field — Drouin said he and his athletics teammates flipped a mental switch and started to believe in themselves. Canada won five medals at the world track championships in Moscow in 2013 and in his mind it was all thanks to that new psychological approach.
“It’s been a shift in our mentality,” Drouin said Friday before answering questions from fans in Toronto’s financial district. “We’re not longer just excited to be there. We want to be on the podium. It’s a mentality that’s contagious.
“Our young athletes are hungry and truly believe that as Canadians that was something they were capable of.”
Drouin won gold at the Rio Olympics with a 2.38-metre jump, just short of the Canadian record of 2.40, which he established in April 2014. His gold was one of six medals Canada’s track and field team won in Rio, its best finish in a non-boycotted Olympics since 1932, when Canadians captured nine medals.
It’s a big improvement from Drouin’s lone medal in 2012, the team’s two medals in 2008 in Beijing and none between the 2000 Sydney Olympics and 2004 Athens Games.
Drouin, who says it still hasn’t sunk in that he’s the Olympic champion, thinks Canada will build on its success in Rio and do even better at the Tokyo Games in 2020.
“We’ve got a couple of world championships between then and now that will obviously be the goal first off,” said Drouin, who also won gold at the 2015 world championships in Beijing, where Canada claimed eight medals. “As track athletes, we work toward quadrennials and everything’s gearing up for four years from now.”
Athletics Canada’s sharp improvement at the Olympics will see an increase in funding from organizations such as Own the Podium, which rewards Olympians and their coaches for winning medals. That will only add fuel to Canada’s fire as the track and field team prepares for Tokyo.
“That was certainly a worry for us a few years ago, that we’d lose funding. Now I don’t think we’re going to be in the same position,” said Drouin. “It makes a huge difference.”