Closing Time

Okay, Canada, who carries the flag in the closing ceremony?

Adam Van Koeverden, he of the single silver medal but who had hoped for double gold, carried it into the giant Bird’s Nest Stadium way back when. He’s likely out.

Canadian wrestler Carol Huynh might have been the most inspirational athlete we had, and she’s one of only three gold medals Canada picked up. But she apparently went home a few days ago, which would rule her out.

The men’s eights won a gold, but eight guys carrying a flag might be a little weird. Eric Lamaze? Probably not. Simon Whitfield? Certainly a great race for silver. But he’s a guy the last time we heard, and the Canadian Olympic Committee likes to move things around, sex-wise.

My choice?

Easy.

Emilie Heymans. Huynh was superb but we didn’t know much about her coming into the Games. Heymans we knew as the slightly fragile diver who never quite got where she wanted to go in individual events. She had a couple of synchronized diving medals to her credit, which is more than 38 million other Canadians can say. But she somehow seemed a bit of an underachiever, often coming up with less than her best when her best was required. Not this time. She was in second place in the late-going and tip-toed to the end of the 10 meter platform for her final dive. She collected her thoughts, gave a deep breath and then nailed one of the best Olympic dives any Canadian has ever tried.

The Quebec resident (yet another feather in her cap for PC Olympic types) was magic. For a moment, she was gold. But then a Chinese diver a decade younger and far tinier grabbed the moment for herself and drilled diving perfection, tumbling and rolling and swirling and somersaulting through the air and landing with a splash so small it was almost unnoticeable. You could’ve dropped a quarter from the platform and it would’ve made a bigger wave than the one Ruolin Chen created. She earned marks of 100 plus and grabbed top spot on the podium. Give credit to her. But give huge marks to Heymans, who came up with perhaps the best dive of her life exactly when she needed it and won as shiny a silver medal as the Olympics has ever seen.

Her final event was Thursday, and if she’s still in Beijing she deserves it.

Give her the flag, Canada.

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Before yours truly visited Beijing, Vancouver 2010 chief John Furlong was relating a story about one of his arrivals prior to the start of the Summer Olympics.

“I’m really ashamed of it,” he said. “I came with Cathy Priestner-Allinger from our office and there was nobody to greet us the way they usually do. We wandered all around the airport, and it’s like Heathrow 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 plus 30 per cent. We were exhausted and we were lost. We kept looking for the Olympics desk but nobody was speaking English. So this young guy, maybe 25, he’s kind of looking at us. And suddenly he’s talking to Cathy in excellent English.”

The chap offered the Canadians a ride. Priestner-Allinger was eager. Furlong was leery.

“He said he’d give us a ride. I said, ‘Cathy, we don’t know this guy.’ But she’s tired and I say ‘okay.’ It turns our he’s got a car and it’s parked outside. I’ve given in. So he says, ‘Oh, my car is down here,’ and we go down around some corner. I’m quite nervous but we get to the car and we start talking about the torch relay and the Olympics. This guy’s very humble, a very nice guy, and we tell him we’re involved in the 2010 Olympics and he turns around to us in the back seat and says, ‘It’s a very great privilege for me to take you in the city. When you come to the Olympic Games, if I can do anything for you or if my company can do anything, you must tell me. Anything at all.’

“We finally get to our hotel and I’m feeling ashamed and embarrassed. He hands me his card and says he’d consider it a great honour to help us the next time we come. So I check in and the next day I’m at a meeting and I come back and there’s a small gift in my room and a letter from this guy reconfirming our conversation.

“I said to myself, ‘John, how could you not have seen this.’ And then I said to myself, ‘Boy, we need two million of these guys.’ I mean, this guy saw this moment when we were lost and he made us feel like a million bucks. And I’m going to tell this story a million times. My God, I felt terrible. But it was a really good example of what we want people to do in Vancouver.

I was in Beijing for four days that trip, and it was my most profound memory of those four days. There was no close second.”

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They’ve got a small library in the Main Press Centre that’ available for journalists who need to do research. Some of the items make sense; Newsweek, the China Daily, the Book of the Olympics.

But how do they end up with “The Social History of Indian Football,” and “Complete Cheerleading,” “China’s Tibet,” and, most curiously, “The Philadelphia Phillies Encylopedia.”

Cuz you never know when an Olympics reporter is gonna have to look up Mitch Williams’ bio.

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Adam van Koeverden doesn’t owe Canada a thing. On the other hand, he owes The Star five yuan.

The Mississauga kayaker, who won a silver medal in the K1 Saturday, stood around talking to several members of the Canadian media about an hour after his race. When an official directed him toward doping control for the standard medalist test, van Koeverden said, “I need something other than water to drink’’ and headed through the closest door, which happened to lead into the media lounge, and to a cooler full of bottled pop.

He grabbed a drink, whereupon he was halted by Chinese officials who pointed to a sign that showed bottles cost five yuan (about 80 cents Cdn). Athletes seldom go into races carrying change and as they tried to make him put it back, a Star reporter handed over the coins.

They released their grip on him and off he went to testing.

Turvy Topsy

John Lennon almost certainly wasn’t thinking of Canada’s performance at the 2008 Summer Olympics when he sang that “nothing is real” in Strawberry Fields Forever. But you’d be hard-pressed to find many folks who would’ve mapped out what’s been a zany week for Canada at the Summer Olympic Games.

The first seven days result in precisely zero medals for Canada. Not one. The headlines screamed, “We Suck,” as potential medalists fell by the wayside. Most notable may have been swimmer Brent Hayden’s failure in the pool.

Then came a magical weekend, when virtual unknown Carol Huynh, whose parents were Vietnamese refugees and who hails from a small mill town in northern British Columbia, grabbed Canada’s first gold with a stunning wrestling win. By the time Sunday turned to Monday, a Canadian team that was shut out for seven days suddenly had seven baubles in two days.

Included was, admittedly, one strongly predicted win by the Canadian men’s eight rowing team. Emilie Heymans, who has often come up short in individual events and who has a reputation for emotional fragility, stood up to the mighty Chinese in the women’s 10 meter platform event and won a silver, getting nudged off the top of the podium only after a young Chinese diver nailed one of the best dives seen in a stunning competition.

Then comes a real switcheroo; potential gold medalist Adam Van Koeverden, the Canadian flag bearer and the representative of the new, “we got attitude” Canadian Olympian the COC keeps talking about, tanks in the men’s K1-1000 race. He was expected to battle for gold but came next to last. And it wasn’t close, as he ran out of steam by the 700 meter mark and fell back at an astonishing rate. A few minutes later, Thomas Hall of Montreal, who was expected to battle for a medal but hardly was a favourite, was behind with a couple hundred meters to go but put on a big push and won bronze in a race that was the exact opposite of Van Koeverden’s.

It’s weird, but a day like Friday is precisely why sports is so enjoyable. Anything can happen. You might even say Tomorrow Never Knows.

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BOLD TALK

It was pretty unusual. The folks who are organizing the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics normally talk in code, as do a lot of folks in the hyper-political Olympic movement. But when they held a press conference here Friday, there was organizing chief John Furlong talking about how the Chinese left the door open for improvements. He went on to cite the empty seats, unused tickets, lack of atmosphere for athletes at some venues and too-big stadiums. In IOC speak, he was a 6.3 on the Richter scale. Not enough to kill, but enough to seriously shake up some folks.

Reporter Jeff Lee, who covers the Vancouver committee for the Vancouver Sun, noted this had to make an impact on the Chinese, who place such importance on saving face. Interesting.

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BOOB TUBE

The subway system here has large TV’s that show live action. A crowd the other day was standing in a packed subway car watching a Chinese team battle for a beach volleyball medal. Why can’t the TTC do this?

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WIN/LOSE

As painful as it was for the Americans to drop their softball gold medal game to Japan, it can do nothing but improve the sports’ image as a competitive one that deserves to be brought back to the Olympics in 2016. The IOC voted it out, as well as baseball, back in 2005 and neither sport will be on the agenda for London in 2012. But there’s a vote slated for October of 2009 and softball has been lobbying hard to get back onto the program. The Japanese win can only help that.

And, yes, that was International Softball chief Don Porter sporting a grin as big as all outdoors as he strolled through the Main Press Centre earlier today.

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SAY AGAIN?

Vancouver organizing chief John Furlong, who’s of Irish descent and occasionally slips into a very Irish lilt, was chatting with the Star on Friday about his ability to communicate in French. It’s rather limited, and he freely admits it.

Furlong tells the story of the time he appeared at a function in Halifax to talk about Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics. “I thought, ‘I know, I’ll do the first part of the speech in Gaelic.’ So I sweated over it and did the first three paragraphs of my speech in Gaelic, and then the last three.

"When I finished, a guy in the audience came up and said, ‘Nice speech. But your French is terrible.’”

Flower Power

It’s quite stunning to walk through the main Olympic grounds here, and to take in the surrounding streets that flank the Olympic Green. The roads and interchanges are simply overflowing with flowers of every colour and variety; bright yellow marigolds, small lantana trees, bright bougainvillea and deep-orange roses.

You simply don’t see litter on the roads. If anyone was to drop anything someone would leap to pick it up. And they even polish the garbage cans around here, just to make sure everything is up to standards. Yeah, they’ve got the manpower, but it’s pretty amazing.

The media village most of us live in looks like Edwards Gardens, with potted palms and enormous coleus blossoms spilling out of containers. The grass is impeccably green, and they water down the pavement every morning to make it look shiny and clean. But who’s going to do this when the world media leaves and regular Chinese folks move into our towering, white apartments? Will anyone spray the pavement for them in the morning and carefully nourish all those plants? Will they simply truck the plants away and plant them in President Hu Jintao’s summer garden somewhere?

And what about the billions of blossoms in parks and along the roadways? You can’t leave a bougainvillea out in a Beijing winter, and the marigolds all are going to fade come October.

It would be interesting to come back in a year – or three – and see what the place looks like. You also have to wonder what will happen to the Bird’s Nest stadium. There’s talk of various sporting events and concerts and such, but even the sports-crazy folks in Australia don’t fill the main stadium they built more than a few times a year. And we suspect a table tennis tournament or a badminton match wouldn’t work so well in a cavernous stadium like the Bird’s Nest, so what giant sporting event will fill the seats two years from now?

The Olympic people always talk about leaving a legacy. The folks in Barcelona transformed their city into a hugely popular tourist destination by rebuilding neighborhood parks and even getting chic designers to build new bridges and light standards with Catalan flare. But Atlanta left hardly any sign that the Olympics were there. The subway and rapid transit improvements in Athens and Beijing no doubt will be of big benefit, but the stadiums often sit silently and empty once the Games are over.

The Olympic legacy, it seems, is a rather mixed bag.

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MENU DU JOUR

Canadians love water sports and we excel at things like rowing and kayaking. We’re getting better in swimming. So Canadian media tends to look for those events on the screen at the Main Press Centre. In Germany, they go ga-ga over discus and hammer throws, which might have something to do with building up strength from carrying trays of beer during Octoberfest. Kazakhs love wrestling, boxing, weightlifting and shooting. China, of course, is big on badminton and diving and ping pong, among other sports.

It makes for entertaining days in the press room. A Canadian reporter will be sitting at his laptop, quietly minding his own business and working on schedules for reporters when a sudden roar will erupt from someone watching a nearby TV screen. “What on earth are those people all excited about,” you wonder, and sometimes you find yourself shaking your head.

But they’ve got to feel the same way when we all dash over to get one of the young girls to change the channel on the big screen set next to the Star’s desk and ask them to put on, gulp, trampoline. As colleague Dave Perkins likes to say, “That’s why they have menus in restaurants.”

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YEAH, BUT WHICH PARTS?

A store in downtown Beijing sports this sign: “Digital Cameras. Video Cameras. Parts of Cameras.”

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BRING YOUR OWN

It’s one thing when the people who stock the toilets with paper forget to re-load, as has happened at the media centre several times lately. But a quick trip downtown for some t-shirts (REALLY EXPENSIVE ONES, if anyone back home who gets one wants to know) and a Chairman Mao shoulder bag and waving Chairman Mao watch revealed a toilet stall in a high-end shopping centre without even a holder to place a roll of paper in.

What’s up with that?

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HOW MUCH FOR THE SOCKS?

Chinese badminton star Lin Dan tossed his shoes and a racket into a crowd of fans after his match the other day. The on-line bidding for the golden shoes is said to be starting at around $75,000 Canadian. Of course, 100 people claim they’ve got the real shoes, just as there probably 100,000 people who claim they were at the last Stanley Cup game the Leafs won. And how anyone other than Lin will be able to tell which are the real golden slippers, Lord only knows.

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EVEN BEATS K.D.

If you’re ever looking for a nice treat, a trip to the Olympic Hospitality Centre here reveals that Pommery champagne and Peking duck make an outstanding combination. Try it instead of nachos and wings at the next Super Bowl party you go to. Or not.

Urine Town

Canadian triathlete Simon Whitfield took doping tests just before he left for China, again a couple days before his race this week, and, because he won a medal, right after taking his silver.

STEVE RUSSELL/TORONTO STAR

Simon Whitfield: No dope.

Some athletes have complained about being regularly drained of blood and having to pee in cups. Not Whitfield. “I wanna get drug tested over and over again,” he said. “I want them to put a little GPS thing on my wrist and then say track me down. It’s inconvenient but I tell you what, it’s inconvenient if people affect you by cheating.”

Speaking of triathlon, former IOC member Paul Henderson of Toronto was giving huge kudos to International Triathlon Union President Les McDonald, the Vancouverite who practically forced the sport into the Olympics (and for that, Simon Whitfield and a grateful nation should give thanks).

Henderson said the Chinese wanted to have triathlon finish at Tiananmen Square but that McDonald wanted no part of what would’ve been a political statement. He demanded the best, said Henderson, and the venue the Chinese ultimately delivered was “the best I have ever seen in any sport,” Henderson wrote in one of his regular, highly-entertaining emails that pillory politicians who don’t provide needed cash for sport but gladly show up to hobnob with athletes.

After the race, while he said Canadian Olympic Committee types were patting themselves and Whitfield on the back, Henderson said he saw McDonald standing alone. “I went down to Les and put my arms around him congratulated him on his years of dedication as the rest of the shallow COC and Canadians took credit,” Henderson wrote in his Tuesday email.

“There were tears in his eyes, as kindred spirits, as he knew at age 78 his days at the top of International Sport were over and that Canada would not recognize what he had accomplished.

“Les should get the Order of Canada,” Henderson said. “He is a great Canadian.”

BOTTOMS UP

The China Daily every day has Language tips so Chinese can learn English, or maybe so English speakers can get around in Beijing. It’s kinda hard to tell. But a recent one was quite fun.

Labelled as “Cheers”, it contained translations for “Have a mouthful,” “Drink a round” and “Let’s raise the glasses.” There also was a question you could pose to a friend: “Are you good at drinking?”

LIMEYS RULE

It’s one thing to finish behind the Americans and the Chinese. But it’s got to grate on the nerves of the Aussies to see the Brits gathering gold medals by the bucketful. The Aussies are steaming mad that the Brits have taken from a long sporting tradition by borrowing Australian coaches and bringing them to Britain as they aim for great success in London for the 2012 Games.

But wasn’t it the Aussies who lured some of Canada’s best to the land Down Under in advance of the Sydney Games? It’s the way it is, mates. You guys did it. The Brits are doing it. Canada will do it if we ever get the Summer Olympics, and you can bet some of the folks behind the 2015 Pan American Games bid are still hoping to some day grab the big show for Toronto.

The Brits, naturally, have no intention of rubbing the Australian’s noses in it. Far from it. Especially not the tabloids. After the Brits surpassed Sydney in the medal standings the other day, the Sun newspaper in London carried the following headline, “G’day, Sport.”

SOFTIES

Softball came into these Games trying to prove it had grown more competitive. And there was the U.S., once again marching through the competition like Sherman through Georgia (too bad Atlanta recovered to beat Toronto for the 1996 Olympics, but there you go).

The Americans did require extra innings to beat Japan yesterday, which at least someone could – and probably will – point to as a potential changing of the guard. Ideally, as far as international softball is concerned, someone other than the U.S. will win gold. But the Americans in the tourney outscored the opposition 57-2, according to Associated Press, so best not to put any money on it.

Canada was a huge disappointment. But they may have done their sport a favour - and possibly helped Canadian girls get to the Games in 2016 - by losing to Australia and giving a country outside North America something to cheer about. Softball isn’t on the Olympic program for 2012, but it could be voted back at an IOC meeting in the fall of 2009. A more competitive, interesting medal round would go a long way to making that happen.

GOLDEN ARCHES

McDonald’s likes to give out notebooks to reporters at the Olympics, and they always come in handy. Often there are coupons for free Big Macs and all that. This time, it came complete with useful translations for words like hello and goodbye and congratulations (pretty handy if you’re attending any event where Chinese athletes are competing).

There also were phrases in Chinese, such as “Where is the nearest subway station,” and “Do you speak English.” The best, however, was the following: “I would like to order a ….”, followed by Chinese translations for Big Mac, French Fries and Corn Cup. Oh, and at the end, there was a translation for “I’m lovin’ it.” Sigh.

COME SAIL AWAY

While Henderson raved about the triathlon venue, and others, COC president Mike Chambers was telling the Star about how fabulous things were down in Qingdao, site of the Olympic sailing venue. “Our sailors told they’ve never seen anything better. There was a huge, huge, brand new loading facility for the boats. They built the race course close to shore and put up stands so people could watch. And the village was a luxury hotel.” The ocean was already there to begin with, we’re told. But I bet if they’d had to, the industrious Chinese would’ve built one of those, too.

SAY WHAT?

Asked to describe the Chinese men’s sabre team, their coach, Christian Bauer, replied, “They are mentally weak.”

After she lost the gold medal in the women’s 50 metre freestyle by 0.01 of a second the other day, American swimmer Dara Torres replied, “Maybe I shouldn’t have filed my fingernails last night.”

In the too much information department, comes the following comment from Ukrainian jumper Jean-Claude Van Geenberghe. Asked about his horse, Quintus, Van Geenberghe replied, “At first he was not quite a good horse. He was not very careful. Now he is my second wife.”

After winning a gold medal, Australian sailor Malcolm Page was queried about future plans. “I am going to get fat,” he said.

Usain, Michael and me

Everybody has their job. Usually at the Olympics, mine is a coordinating role for the paper and a reporting role for the web site. The hours are insane, and it’s a lot to juggle (especially with a time difference some of us are still trying to get our heads around), but it’s also a real adrenaline rush.

The Olympics are like nothing else, and just to be reporting on them off a television set in the press room is not a bad thing when that’s all you can do. But, sometimes, the schedule works so that a desk-bound journalist can escape for a few minutes and watch an event live and in person. And, boy, did I pick a couple of good ones on the weekend.

On Saturday night, I packed up my trusty Dell laptop (the one with the Canada flag over the word “Dell,” because, after all, they’re not an Olympics sponsor and I don’t want to offend the Lenovo people) and wandered over to the Bird’s Nest to see some track and field. Hadn’t seen the stadium since the Opening Ceremony, and I’m glad to say it has aged well in the last week.

The bright orange-red lights they use under the criss-cross steel beams look uber-cool at night, and the light standards along the main spine of the Olympic Green all flash in bright colours as you walk along and check out folks from all over the world; Mexican fans in giant sombreros, Aussies of both the male and female variety with bright green wigs and Russian women in red dresses with stiletto heels (odd choice for this kind of sport).

The walk over was terrific, but the best part of the night was the track, where I got to watch Jessica Zelinka of London, Ont. run a terrific 800-metre race. She didn’t win a medal in the heptathlon, but she competed strongly despite a severe foot injury last year.

A few minutes later came the piece de resistance; the 100-metre dash. The press tribune was jam-packed with far more people than it should’ve been, and there were no empty seats. But I managed to squeeze in between some folks and watch Usain Bolt make history with his “Is it really this easy” gold medal sprint and his 9.69-second world record.

It’s pretty neat to say you’ve seen the fastest runner in history strut his stuff, especially when you know he could’ve gone as low as 9.59 if he hadn’t slowed down from warp factor six as he came near the finish line.

A few hours later, I got up and wandered to the Water Cube to help colleague Rosie DiManno cover the Sunday morning swimming. Rosie was charged with looking after Michael Phelps, so I said I’d keep an eye on Canada’s Ryan Cochrane. Sure enough, the kid comes through with a bronze medal. That was fun.

But here’s where I really owe Mr. Cochrane a debt of gratitude. If he was a real quote machine, I would’ve had to spend a lot of time going over notes and such and putting my story together for our 12:15 a.m. drop-dead deadline. But he’s a swimmer, not a public speaker, and it didn’t take all that long to put a story together that bore a passing resemblance to journalism. I looked up at the clock on the press room wall in the basement of the Water Cube where most of the reporters were working and realized that Phelps was going for his record eighth medal of the Olympics. I was able to dash (well, it felt like it) to the stairs and up four short flights to the main deck and then ran to the stands to see him jump into the water for his amazing butterfly lap.

He turned a deficit into a lead that the Americans would not give up, and I could see the expression of joy on Phelps’ face when teammate Jason Lezak – the guy who had saved his bacon in an earlier relay – touched the wall in front of his rivals to give Phelps medal number ocho. I had to run back downstairs immediately to finish up the Cochrane story, but I got to see Phelps in the biggest swimming race in history. Just as I had managed to see Bolt set his world record the night before.

Remind me again some time that I might be one of the luckiest people I know.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH? Those of us who work at the Toronto Star, and there are a few, probably know one Gabe Gonda, currently the Saturday Ideas editor. We noticed he bears a strong resemblance (do a photo shop and take off Gonda’s dark locks) to American swimmer Michael Phelps. Don’t let it go to your head, Gabe.

(Photo credits: TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO; REUTERS)