Canadian gymnasts make team history
LONDON — Everyone got a hug on their way down the stairs, to the seats, where they were hugged again. And when everyone was hugged, the Canadian women’s gymnastics team posed for photographs, smiling arm-in-arm, after making history.
Canada has never won a medal in the artistic team final, and that did not change Tuesday in London, but that does not mean nothing changed. The Canadians finished fifth out of eight teams, giving the country its best-ever result in an Olympic team event.
The United States won gold with a score of 183.596, leaving their rival Russians with the silver (178.530) and Romania with bronze (176.414). Other than the Americans, who are already accorded celebrity status in the sport, and are thus expected to deliver under any circumstances, there might not have been a happier team than the Canadians (170.804).
“It honestly is amazing,” national team director Kyna Fletcher said. “You’re in the big leagues, and when you’re dealing with the top four, where they are now, you know you’re in reach. It’s fabulous.”
Canada, she said, funded its Olympic preparations — as well as its junior program — on a shoestring budget of about $285,000. Fletcher estimated the Americans worked with a budget of more than $2 million.
“It’s a sport that is not heavily funded,” she said, the buzz still audible from the stands above, in the North Greenwich Arena.
The Canadians did not even qualify four years ago in Beijing, and had made sixth place a stated goal after their surprising qualification for the final in London. This was the first time a Canadian team had qualified for a team final in a nonboycott year. Canada, with a team comprised of four teenagers and a 20-year-old, was able to compete with a unique freedom. It was a freedom from expectation, having already exceeded its expectations on Sunday.
As the friends and family of Canadian Dominique Pegg repeated outside the venue before the competition began, the team was already in celebration mode. No Canadian had done what they were about to do, and with the world’s attention on the established monarchies of the sport — the U.S., Russia and Romania among them — they could go about their work away from the spotlight.