I’m happy to report that after one week it looks like Toronto, just like London and Sochi before it, has embraced the Games. Ticket sales have soared and venues have been packed with enthusiastic spectators. The traffic hell hasn’t materialized. Travel times around the city are not appreciably worse than normal. In fact I’d venture to guess that in the west end of the city it was much worse last summer with the brilliantly planned (yes, I’m being sarcastic), concurrent, major repairs to both the Gardiner Expressway and Lakeshore Boulevard. Most importantly, as this is after all a sporting event, the home team has charged to the top of the medal table. For most of week one the Canadian team led the standings and was only passed by the United States on Saturday (Day 8). As I write this, Canadian athletes have won 50 gold, 42 silver and 34 bronze medals for a total of 126. While the Americans have passed Canada in both golds (52) and total (141), I find it interesting that Canada’s winning percentage is higher. When Canada wins medals it’s more likely to be gold or silver than bronze, which is pretty cool. There are all kinds of ways you can play with the medal count stats. Medals per capita is always an interesting one. In the Pan Am Games Cuba, with a population of just over 10 million, almost always runs away with it in that category. This time Canada isn’t trailing by much. Clearly, competing at home is agreeing with Canadian athletes.
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| Pan Am Gold Metal |
As I’ve mentioned the Pan Ams are not the Olympics. They’re a big deal but nothing is a bigger deal than the Olympic Games. Yet Torontonians and people from around southern Ontario have bought into cheering the athletes on and have been, from all accounts, gracious hosts to visiting athletes as well as strong supporters of the home side. I can’t help but wonder how intense the support and enthusiasm would have been had we had the Olympics here in 2008. We worked hard on that bid and most of the IOC members told us confidentially that ours was the best plan they’d ever seen. Too many then went and voted for Beijing, which then did a great job with their Games. But I’m more confident than ever that had Toronto been given the nod it would have been spectacular. But back to 2015…
The Opening Ceremonies in the Rogers Centre (or as it is called during the Games “The Pan Am Dome”) were fantastic. Certainly up to the standard of any others I’ve witnessed. I thought the organizers got it right in two important areas. First, they had the athletes march in early so they were able to see most of the show, which doesn’t always happen. Second, they had chairs for the athletes on the infield so they didn’t have to stand for the duration of the ceremony. That has hardly ever happened. Occasionally a section of the stadium seating has been reserved for the athletes, but usually they are left standing on the infield for the entire ceremony which is the last thing they should be doing with their competitions imminent.
The weather across southern Ontario has cooperated for the most part, with lots of sun and warm temperatures, although it did rain at the end of the canoe-kayak competition and I can attest that loading the boats on the trailer afterward in that rain wasn’t much fun. It got a little toasty on Saturday for the women’s marathon, with temperatures in the 30s Celsius and high humidity, but the women overcame that extra challenge and the streets were lined with cheering spectators.
As I haven’t been out to any other venues yet to see other events I’ll restrict my discussion from this point to the canoe-kayak events. Although I’ve caught as much as I can of other events on television I really haven’t seen enough to comment on the other sports yet. Canoe-kayak? I saw everything!
The Welland venue is still relatively new and this is just the second international event it has hosted (the first being the Junior and U23 World Championships in 2013). They have pretty much nailed down every technical aspect to providing a first class competition, and light winds from the south meant that what little wind there was, was straight up the course making the races totally fair.
The Pan Am canoe-kayak competition is actually pretty small, with only about 140 athletes in total so it seemed kind of laid back compared to some of the massive World Cups like Duisburg. Additionally the race card is smaller as well, for the most part mirroring the Olympic program:
Men
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K1 1000m
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C1 1000m
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K2 1000m
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C2 1000m
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K4 1000m
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K1 200m
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C1 200m
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K2 200m
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Women
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K1 500m
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K2 500m
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K4 500m
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K1 200m
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C1 200m
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Canada’s women’s K4 opened up the competition by thrilling the partisan crowd with a convincing victory. I’ve watched them race all year and this was the best I’ve seen them go. It’s always nice when you have your best races at the big events so the girls were justifiably pleased.
Unfortunately on day two, the Canadian men couldn’t duplicate that effort in the K4 1000m, finishing just off the podium in 4th. There are implications here in that Canada has to be the top crew from the Americas at the World Championships in Milan in August to qualify for next summer’s Olympic Games in Rio. Cuba, who won the race after hiding during the World Cup races this spring, will be a formidable foe. As this is a crew I’ve been working with, all I can say at this point is we have some work to do over the next five weeks.
On day three, and the first full day of finals, Adam van Koeverden faded to third after leading for most of the race in the men’s K1 1000m. Adam is one of the guys I’m fortunate to work with. He’s a 2004 Olympic Champion and 4 time Olympic medalist. We had done some good work leading into the Pan Ams and he was really comfortable in his new Nelo Cinco K1 so this result is a bit of a puzzler, especially considering how well he appeared to be paddling in the first ¾ of the race and how dramatically he died in the last 200m. Cuba’s Jorge Garcia was thrilled to win the gold and Argentina’s Daniel Dal Bo the silver.
Men’s C1 1000m was in my mind the premier event of the competition in that it was the only event in which two thirds of a 2015 World Cup podium was racing. In Duisburg in May, Brazil’s Queirroz Dos Santos was second behind Germany’s Sebastian Brendel while Canada’s Mark Oldershaw was third. That meant that this event in the Pan Ams was going to be a big showdown between Dos Santos and Mark.
Mark and Dos Santos approach racing 1000m from totally different ends of the paddling spectrum. Mark is more traditional, paddling in a gear more commonly seen in 1000m races. His stroke rate is in the 56 to 60 range depending on conditions, and obviously he has a longer stroke. Dos Santos paddles the 1000m at just over 70 strokes/minute with a much shorter, more dynamic stroke. Imagine watching two cyclists race using two different gears, one using a heavy gear and lower cadence and one a much lower gear and much higher cadence and you get the idea of the difference between these two athletes. It is a substantial difference, with one relying more on muscular power and the other on aerobic power.
In Duisburg, Dos Santos got ahead of Mark early and Mark reeled him in the last 250m, finishing just over a half boat length behind. At the Pan Ams the race was similar, though conditions were different with a slight headwind in Welland making it a longer race. Mark made his move a little earlier, caught up a little closer to Dos Santos than in Duisburg and then stalled, finishing just under a half boat behind.
Being involved with helping Mark this year I can say I’m pleased with that performance, especially when considering where Mark was in relation to Dos Santos at the World Championships in Moscow eleven months ago. There Mark finished a distant sixth, while Dos Santos had the race won in world best time, but actually fell out of his boat on the boat shoot at the finish and wasn’t in the boat when it crossed the line, resulting in his disqualification. Mark has closed the gap by a tremendous amount in eleven months and has five more weeks to find a way to gain another half-length. Whether he does or not I’ll still consider this year a big success if he can reproduce a similar quality effort in Milan. I think Mark would be very pleased with a spot on the podium this year. Where he really wants to be on top is in Rio.
In men’s K2 1000m, Cuba’s Jorge Garcia doubled up on his K1 1000m victory by teaming with Reiner Torres to win by a comfortable margin over Argentina with Brazil coming third in a photo finish with Canada and Mexico.
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Men's C2 1000m on start line |
The last final of day three was women’s K-1 500m. As expected it was a battle between Canada’s Michelle Russell and Cuba’s Yusmari Mekgana. Michelle loves the Welland course, having won the U23 World Championships on it two years ago. She raced well in Europe this spring and is close to being in the top group of the final at World Cups. Mekgana surprised everyone at the first World Cup this spring in Portugal where she battled stroke for stroke in the K-1 200m with New Zealand’s Lisa Carrington, the defending World and Olympic Champion.
Michelle and Mekgana were within a few inches of each other for the first half of the race before Mekgana began to pull away, in the end winning by a fairly comfortable margin of 1.7 seconds.
Day four began with the women’s K2 500m final before moving to all of the 200m finals. In K-2 Cuba’s Mekgana teamed with Yurieni Guerra to top crews from Argentina and Mexico, joining her teammate Jorge Garcia in completing the singles-tandem double.
In the men’s K1 200m, Canada’s Mark de Jonge, a 2012 Olympic Bronze medalist and the defending World Champion didn’t disappoint the home crowd, winning by a comfortable margin of more than 0.5 seconds over Brazil’s Fretas Da Silva and Ecuador’s Cesare De Cesare. I love watching Mark race. The impressive level of precision in his paddling at such a high rate is amazing. At more that 160 strokes/minute he’s still able to make every stroke perfect. As a result his ability to perform consistently in this very challenging event has become remarkable.
Speaking of remarkable…I can’t think of a better word to describe Quierroz Dos Santos. He totally dominated the men’s C1 200m final, winning by 1.3 seconds. I’ve never seen anyone in this event appear to be still accelerating after 100m…until now. It’s incredible to watch. What is more incredible is that if he maintains his current form, I think he has a strong chance to win medals in both C1 1000m and 200m in Rio. This shouldn’t happen. Before the introduction of 200m races into the Olympic program, when the singles races were 1000m and 500m, it was not uncommon to see athletes double up on podium appearances by winning medals in both distances. More athletes than I can count have done this, including myself. The two distances are sufficiently similar in their physiological demands that you can train for both without specializing in either. They are a natural pair, much like the natural pair events in athletics like the 100m and 200m, 200m and 400m or 800m and 1500m. However 1000m and 200m in canoe-kayak don’t pair up very well. They are so different in both their physiological and technical demands that you really can’t excel in both. You’ve got to specialize in one if you want to get to the podium. Very few people even attempted to double up in London, and nobody who did was able to do so with any success. What I saw of Dos Santos in Welland, however, makes me think he can do it. It’s definitely something to watch for in Rio. Canada’s Jason McCoombs raced well, winning the silver medal. In my opinion it was Jason’s best race of the year and an improvement on his performances during the World Cups this spring so it means he is on track for the World Championships where he’ll be trying to qualify for Rio.
In the women’s C1 200m, Canada’s Laurence Vincent-Lapointe crushed the field, winning by over two seconds which is an eternity in a 200m race. While part of this can be explained by the fact that the field in women’s canoe is still developing, it would be a mistake to take anything away from Laurence. She has taken her racing to a higher level this year. Her technique has continued to evolve and I believe her fitness has improved. While the level of women’s canoe globally has really taken off and improved dramatically, Laurence has continued to stay well ahead of that improving field and in doing so has clearly demonstrated that women can paddle a canoe at an Olympic level. I have a hard time believing that anyone watching these races can deny that it is time for women’s canoe to be included in the Olympic program for 2020.
The women’s K1 200m went much like the 500m, with Michelle Russell challenging Yusmari Mekgana for the first half of the race and Mekgana pulling away in the second half. It will be really interesting to see if Mekgana can get on the podium at the World Championships in August. It certainly won’t surprise me if she does.
The last event of the canoe-kayak competition was the men’s K2 200m. Canada sent out a crew of Mark de Jonge and Pierre-Luc Poulin, who sits third in the men’s 1000m K4. P-L has been a big addition to the senior team this year after racing on the U23 team last season. He’s a beast in the weight room and pretty speedy in K1 and won the right to race with Mark at the Pan Ams by beating Adam van Koeverden in a 200m K1 race off. However despite the impressive individual components of this K2, the Pan Ams was their first time in the boat together so they could hardly be considered one of the favorites in this race.
It’s clearly not ideal to send a crew to the starting line at a major games without an extensive background of training and racing together. Unfortunately most major games have athlete quota numbers you have to meet, and for Canada those numbers meant that in the K2 200m we couldn’t send a dedicated crew. We had to create one from the athletes already named to the team in the other events. Having Mark de Jonge already on the team clearly gives you something to work with. Finding the right guy to go with him was the trick and it turned out to be P-L. In the K2 200m final they had a pretty solid race, finishing in a photo finish with Brazil for third, behind Argentina and Cuba. While they were drifting into boat control it was announced that they had finished fourth, just 5/1000 of a second behind Brazil. This actually meant that there was a technical tie for third as International Canoe Federation rules call anything less that 1/100 of a second a tie. So for the final race of the 2015 Pan Am Games there were actually four crews on the podium, with two bronze medals being awarded.
For the canoe-kayak athletes the four days of the Pan Am Games competition were over in a flash. For the group I coach it was back to Oakville and training for the rest of the week. With the Worlds only five weeks away there is still a lot to do.
With one more week to go there is still a lot to come at the 2015 Pan Am Games. I hope to get into Toronto this week to check out “Panamania” at Nathan Phillips Square around City Hall, and to get a feel for the vibe around the city. I’m pretty stoked with the way the city has responded to the Games, the way Torontonians have played gracious hosts and supported the home team. I’m not surprised at how well Canadian athletes have been performing in all the events and am excited for all those athletes who’ve had the chance to compete at home. Here’s hoping the experience here helps them on their road to Rio.
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