WOE CANADA
Injuries and illness hurt, but aftershocks from medal shutout could reverberate all the way to Tokyo without quick thinking
LONDON — As Canadian sprinter Aaron Brown walked off the track for the last time here, his plan was to get himself to Heathrow Airport and never think about these world championships again.
“We’re going to leave this in the past. Once we get on the flight and leave London, this will stay here in London.”
After 10 days full of injuries, illness and disappointing performances for the Canadian team there are plenty of athletes who feel that way. But Glenroy Gilbert can’t do that. He’s the head coach of the team that came here looking to win at least eight medals, and left with no medals at all.
It’s the first time that’s happened since 2001, when the world athletics championships were held in Edmonton.
Injuries meant sprint star Andre De Grasse and Olympic high jump champion Derek Drouin didn’t even make it to the track for their events here, while a stomach virus that swept through the team hotel robbed Damian Warner of his strength just before he had to compete in the 10-event decathlon.
Those athletes could have contributed as many as five medals, so that certainly accounts for a big part of what happened — but not all of it.
So Gilbert, who has only been in the job for a month, found himself trying to explain what happened to the rest of the medal hopes.
“We have to look at what we can do next with our athletes, ensuring that we’ve got the right systems in place to deliver the next time,” Gilbert said Sunday night.
He highlighted problems with athletes not arriving in peak fitness, and some inexperience with high-level competition.
“We have three years to right the ship in terms of Tokyo (the 2020 Olympics).”
From the first final, when Mohammed Ahmed smashed the national10,000-metre record, to 800-metre runner Melissa Bishop, Canada’s final competitor Sunday night, there were many groundbreaking performances by Canadian athletes here.
Trouble was, they just weren’t quite enough to get to the podium. And for a team that won eight medals at the 2015 worlds — a Canadian record — and followed that up with six at last summer’s Olympics in Rio, it was a huge letdown.
“It’s been tough,” said Bishop, who finished fifth in the tough 800-metre field led by Caster Semenya.
“The worlds leading up to Rio, and Rio, were so high and to come off of that is hard for everybody. I really wanted to put Canada on the map with a medal tonight, but it’s just not in the cards.
This result is not at all what the sport of athletics, which is just starting to draw Canadian interest back to the track — in large part because of the success of De Grasse — expected or wanted. But things also aren’t as bad as they might first appear.
“We look at the bright side of things,” Gilbert said. “There have been some really remarkable performances.”
Brittany Crew became the first Canadian woman ever to reach a shot put final.
Crystal Emmanuel was the first Canadian woman in a 200-metre final since 1983.
Justyn Knight joined Ahmed in the 5,000-metre final — two Canadians in the run for medals in an event where only one Canadian had ever made it that far, back in 1987.
And, they’re all young athletes, which is a key factor for Anne Merklinger, chief executive of Own the Podium, the high-performance sports body which targets federal funds to athletes and sports with the most potential to win Olympic medals.
“It’s not just those that are on the podium in London in 2017. It’s about those who are exhibiting medal potential for the next (two Olympic cycles),” Merklinger said.
“There are lots of great young athletes that have emerged at this particular championships which really bodes well for 2020 and 2024.”
Athletics Canada’s overall performance here will be part of a debrief with Own the Podium advisers in the coming weeks.
“What are the lessons learned?” said Merklinger. “What are the tweaks that need to be made over the next three years for Tokyo?”
But tweaks won’t mean slashed budgets, she added.
With Canada’s high-performance funding so closely linked to winning medals, many athletes fear that failing to perform puts their sport at risk of losing big chunks of money.
“What’s important is, we work with the sport to identify what we might need to tweak in order to deliver on demand at the Olympic Games. That’s a really important conversation for us to have with them,” she said. “It’s year one. There are three more years to go.”
Athletics Canada received over $4 million this year from Own the Podium, and 75 per cent of their core funding is guaranteed annually until the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Merklinger said.
For track insiders and sports administrators who know the numbers, it’s easy to imagine what might have been if De Grasse had a chance to run in the 100, 200 — where teammate Brown was disqualified for a line violation after winning his heat — and 4x100 relay here instead of sitting out with a hamstring injury, or if Drouin had been able to overcome his ongoing Achilles injury in time, or if Warner wasn’t ill and in quarantine until the day before his event.
But for the broader public that has become accustomed to watching Canadian track and field athletes win over the last few years, there’s a danger they’ll start to tune out.
“We’re just going to have to ride that wave,” said marathoner Eric Gillis, the team co-captain and one of the athletes struck down by a stomach virus.
“People inside the sport don’t really believe it’s as bad as it looks now, and when it goes really well it’s not as good as it looks, either,” he said.
To sustain excellence — like winning eight medals at the worlds — takes depth that Canada’s never had, or a lot of luck, which Canada certainly didn’t have this time, Gillis said.
“Team members aren’t going to get too caught up in the medal count. They’re just looking to see what they can do individually to improve next year and beyond.
“That’s good in a situation, that you don’t buy into the whole ‘we’re only as good as the number of medals we get.’ But it’s also good when we’re winning lots of medals that we don’t take it for granted.”