Long fall for Canadian Barber in pole vault
Reigning champion winds up in 8th place at London world championships
LONDON— On his third attempt at a height that’s about the equivalent of jumping through a second storey window Shawn Barber grazed the bar.
It quivered and it bounced but it stayed up.
That would be the very last bit of good luck for the Canadian team Tuesday night at the track and field world championships.
Barber entered the London Stadium as the reigning world champion in pole vault and left eighth, after missing all three attempts at his next height, 5.75 metres.
“You miss three times in a row and that’s all you get. Moving forward, lessons to be learned,” the 23-year-old said.
Though he was the gold medallist from 2015, Barber came here as a bit of an underdog, having struggled all year, in part, due to the changes he’s been making with his technique.
But that wasn’t the problem here, he said.
“Those things were coming together nicely,” he said.
“I think it’s just between the ears for me. The weather was good, the atmosphere was good, I just couldn’t line everything up the way I needed to.” That’s been the story of the entire Canadian team at these championships.
They’ve blown through plan A, plan B and are well into plan C now.
They’ve lost key athletes to injuries — notably sprint star Andre De Grasse and Olympic high jump champion Derek Drouin — and a viral illness has swept through their hotel, affecting other team members.
The team’s original goal of winning at least eight medals is long gone now.
At the halfway point of this 10-day meet, Canada has zero medals and the highest finish so far has come from Matt Hughes, who ran a season’s best time to finish sixth in 3,000-metre steeplechase.
“I’m not really satisfied to be honest,” said the 28-year-old from Oshawa, who had worked incredibly hard to get back to form after suffering an oddly debilitating injury from a runin, literally, with a fire hydrant during a training run.
“I was right there with a lap to go. Maybe if I didn’t take two months off with the injury I’d be there. I’ll just take that as motivation leading forward for the next two or three years.”
In the very next race of the evening, the men’s 800 final, Brandon McBride went out in front, as he likes to with his long-legged stride.
He led the race for the first lap, giving Canadians something to cheer for, only to cross the line last on the second, deciding lap. Three rounds, something he’s never done before, is a lot different than two, McBride said afterwards.
“What hurts me the most is not being able to get my team on the board,” the 23-year-old from Windsor said.
“We’ve had a few downs, a few lows, but there’s still a long ways to go,” he said.
“We have a few athletes, especially on the women’s side, who made the final or can make the final and really do some damage. So I don’t think it’s over just yet.”
Indeed, three Canadian women ad- vanced with impressive performances Tuesday night.
Toronto sprinter Crystal Emmanuel — who recently broke Canada’s long-standing women’s 200-metre record — continues to look strong and easily ran her way into Thursday’s semifinals.
Sage Watson, the 23-year-old from Medicine Hat, Alta., advanced to Thursday’s final of the 400-metre hurdles.
And Toronto’s Brittany Crew came from behind to advance to the final in shot put with her very last 18.01metre throw.
“We’ve been here before,” Athletics Canada’s Carla Nicholls said about the team’s early struggles.
“I remember last year at the Rio Olympic Games in the first two days we had some unexpected things happen and we didn’t get the performances that we wanted, and we were patient and we continued to focus on the performance and that’s what we continue to do now,” Nicholls said.
Over the first two days in Rio, Canada didn’t win a medal in 20K race walk, Mohammed Ahmed was dead last in the 10,000 and heptathlete Brianne Theisen-Eaton gave herself a tough road to a bronze medal after a poor first day. The team rebounded to have one of its best Summer Games with six medals and race walker Evan Dunfee and Ahmed both came through with dramatic fourth place finishes in other distances.
“We recognize that it is a difficult situation but we do have all the plans in place and that’s what high performance is, coming in with a plan A, plan B and we’re on plan C,” she said.