Welcome back to Easy Like Ea-Monday Morning, you’re easy reading article to start off your week. The best part is if you are reading this properly, you should be doing so on the pooper during company time! As the 2020 Tokyo Olympics come to a close, let’s take a look back at the successes that Canadian Athletes achieved.
Canada finished just outside of the top 10, coming in at 11th in total medals (and T-11th in Gold’s) with 24 overall; 7 Gold, 6 Silver and 11 bronze. This was Canada’s highest medal count at a non-boycotted Summer Olympics (won 44 at 1984 Olympics). The Women led the charge with Canada, winning all of the country’s medals early on and finished with 18 of the 24 medals. The medals came from a variety of sports including swimming, diving. weight lifting, rowing, judo, cycling and team sports soccer and softball.
It was poetically fitting that the year where Canadian women led the charge for their country, a Canadian woman became the most decorated Canadian athlete in history. Penny Oleksiak won her 7th medal this year, which at the time made her the first and only athlete to win 3+ medals at back-to-back Olympics. At just 21 years of age she has potential to add to her medal total in future Olympics, which should be a fun internal Canadian duel with Andre DeGrasse. However, getting back to Penny, the best part is that she was not afraid to brag about it!
A second major storyline among the women athletes was Canada’s women’s soccer team changing the colour of their medal! The team finished 3rd at both the London (2012) and Rio (2016) Olympics and the team arrived in Tokyo with one goal and that was the improve on their previous two results. On their run to the Gold, the team was also able to finally slay their own dragon, defeating the US in the semi-finals off of a penalty shot goal from Jessie Fleming. Stephanie Labbe also deserves some recognition, she only allowed 1 goal in the knock out round and backstopped Canada through two shoot out wins on their way to Gold.
The results and the coverage of Canadian women athletes has never been higher and they are only just picking up steam. While there have been progress made in the equity of funding, Canada is just beginning to scratch the surface on the potential of their female athletes and further funding should provide additional medals. This is the perfect time for the Canadian Olympic Committee and their sponsors to up their investment.
On the men’s side of things, Canada’s flag bearer at the Closing Ceremony, Damian Warner won the country’s first ever Gold medal in the Decathlon. In doing so he broke the 9000 point mark, becoming the first athlete to do so at the Olympic Games, setting the Olympic Record. Canada’s Athletics team won all 6 of the men’s medals led in large part by Andre DeGrasse who joined Penny Oleksiak as the second ever athlete to win 3+ medals in back-to-back Olympics. He finished with a Gold and two Bronze, one of which he earned as the anchor of the 4 x 100m Relay team where he came from behind, starting the last leg in 5th before he passed two runners to get Canada on the podium.
With all the distractions and hurdles that these athletes had to overcome (literally for some, metaphorically for others), kudos to all of the athletes that represented Canada with pride!
As always don’t forget to check out the rest of the Hot Sauce family and check our Youtube channel for all of our podcasts and videos. This week on Not Sauce For Work Peeze, Terry and Eagle discuss NBA Free Agency, Evander Kane, the Olympics as well as an interview with Stephanie Medeiros from the ABB Group / Formula E.