SILVER LININGS
Opponent’s doping DQ has Canadian race walkers due medals
If the silver medals they deserve were to suddenly materialize, great. If they’re accompanied by cheques from World Athletics, even better.
But Evan Dunfee wasn’t really counting on either occurrence earlier this month when he took to Twitter to recount a stunning Canadian team performance in the 20-kilometre event at the 2014 World Race Walking Cup in Taicang, China.
Dunfee led the Canadian contingent in 11th at 1:20:13, Inaki Gomez was 12th in 1:20:18 and Ben Thorne 13th in 1:20:19 and all three obliterated Gomez’s existing national record of 1:20:58. Their combined placement total of 36 left them in fourth place in the team event, behind Ukraine, China and Japan. The performance was good enough for $7,500 US in prize money and some great memories.
And for six years, that’s where it stood.
But in April, it was announced that one of the Ukrainian athletes who finished ahead of the Canadians in the race, Nazar Kovalenko, had been sanctioned for a doping violation. He was stripped of several results, including that May 4, 2014, race in China, so Ukraine was dropped into sixth place in the team event.
All three Canadians moved up one spot in the standings and Canada jumped from fourth to second place, and should be due an additional $4,500 US in prize money.
“Hopefully one day we’ll get our medals,” Dunfee said. “At the end of the day, it was more about getting to retell the story of the race. It was the six-year anniversary. It was a lot of fun, a good race, and we all broke Inaki’s existing national record by about 45 seconds. For me, it’s still my best time ever. It was a special race for the three of us. To have an excuse to share the story of that race was really nice.”
World Athletics, the governing body for the sport, took notice of Dunfee’s tweet thread and adjusted the race results on its website to reflect Kovalenko’s disqualification and the Canadian team’s move into second place. But there has been no indication so far that either medals or prize money is in the offing.
The 2020 edition of the event, scheduled for early May in Belarus, fell victim to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dunfee’s best hope is that World Athletics schedules a medal ceremony for Canada the next time the race walking world gets together.
He feels particularly badly for Creighton Connolly and Bruno Carriere, the other members of the Canadian team who were in China in 2014. Carriere finished 93rd and Connolly was DQ’d for a foot fault during the race, so their results didn’t count toward Canada’s placement. Neither one is active in the sport any longer.
“Even though they weren’t part of the three who placed, they were very much a part of that team,” Dunfee said. “It’s always hard when guys like that miss out on an opportunity and never get to relive it.”
Gomez, Thorne, Dunfee and Mathieu Bilodeau went on to win silver medals at the 2016 event, but fourth place was the best Canadian finish in history in 2014.
Even more remarkable was the fact that Dunfee, Gomez and Thorne — all B.C. athletes and training partners — basically called their shot in a pre-race conversation with Peter Eriksson, then head coach for Athletics Canada.
“Inaki, Ben and I said ‘yeah, we’re all going to smash Inaki’s national record and we’re going to win a medal. And that’s how it is.’ He was like, ‘who the hell do these kids think they are?’” Dunfee said.
“We said it with such ease and nonchalance. That’s what the plan was and that’s what we’re ready to do. He didn’t believe us, I don’t think.”
The race was run on a two-kilometre loop in the centre of the city. Eriksson was positioned at the Canadians’ drinks table.
“He was handing us our drinks every two kilometres. You could tell for the first couple laps he didn’t care, race walking wasn’t really his thing. He was just doing his job, supporting us. After about 10k, when you could see we were still in the mix, every time I saw him he was getting more and more excited, yelling and screaming and cheering louder and louder.”
The crew celebrated their near podium miss, but it left Dunfee with a sick feeling. Had he beaten just one more athlete, in this case Kovalenko, the Canadians would have been in third place, scooping up historic bronze medals in real time.
“I personally took it as my fault,” Dunfee said.
When Kovalenko’s disqualification was made official, Dunfee felt vindicated.
“He finished something like two seconds ahead of me. I don’t have to kick myself for not taking him down in the final 100 metres.”