Jack Todd: Olympics glory on full display during riveting 45 minutes

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At about 3 p.m. on a warm, humid Saturday afternoon in Montreal, this was happening on the other side of the Atlantic:

Summer McIntosh was winning her fourth medal and third gold at the Paris Olympics, this one in the 200-metre individual.

Local hero Félix Auger-Aliassime was battling for the bronze medal in tennis.

Canada’s embattled women’s team was about to go into a shootout against powerful Germany after 120 minutes of nil-nil soccer.

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A 400-metre hurdler named Femke Bol, running the anchor leg of the mixed 4-x-400-metre relay for her Netherlands team, was about to pull off one of the great feats in Olympic history. From fourth place, 15 metres back of an American team that had set a world record in the preliminaries, Bol began her move going into the final curve. She overhauled Belgium, then Great Britain, then with track running out, she caught the Americans and won going away.

Somewhere in between, young Saint Lucian runner Julian Alfred blew the doors off the heavy favourite, American Sha’Carri Richardson, to win the women’s 100 metres on the track.

Canada would lose the shootout to the Germans, bringing down the curtain on the soap opera that began the day an assistant coach was caught using a drone to spy on a New Zealand practice.

Auger-Aliassime would lose in three sets to Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti, ending his attempt to win a second bronze in as many days after winning the mixed doubles with Gabriela Dabrowski.

All this happened within a span of 45 minutes, give or take. My thumbs were getting a workout as I tried to channel-hop in order to catch everything. At that, I probably missed most of what was going on in Paris at the same time. It was as intense a three-quarters of an hour as I’ve experienced in a lifetime watching sports — heartbreaking and exhilarating and impossible by turns, with Bol’s remarkable run the breathtaking climax and Canada’s exit from the soccer tournament providing the heartbreak.

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For Canada, the two storylines of Paris 2024 are and always will be the fate of the soccer team and McIntosh’s storybook Olympics, untarnished by her inability to drag her medley relay team to a medal on the final day of the swimming competition.

McIntosh is everything you want in a sporting hero, especially in this country, where modesty is still deemed a virtue. She is down-to-earth, humble, matter-of-fact and able to knock off gold medals in almost casual fashion, after which she sings O Canada in both official languages.

The fate of the women’s soccer team is a darker tale, the heroism of the women who managed to battle through to the knockout round juxtaposed against the raw ugliness of the drone spying scandal imposed by disgraced British coach Bev Priestman and before that by her mentor, John Herdman.

Priestman has been punished with a one-year suspension, a relative slap on the wrist given that she betrayed her own players, tried to throw her assistants under the bus to save her own skin, and looked into firing an assistant who refused to spy.

So far, Herdman has avoided any consequences, even though Canada Soccer has admitted that the drone spying began with him. Over the weekend, he tried to brazen it out, refusing to answer questions about the scandal and boasting of his ability to tune out the “noise,” ignoring the fact that he is himself responsible for that noise, according to his own federation.

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To punish Priestman and ignore Herdman’s role in the scandal reeks of sexism — but the narrative is far from over. There will be more investigations, with Canada’s gold medal won in Tokyo in 2021 hanging in the balance.

Priestman deserves to lose her medal but the women on that team deserve to keep theirs. How it will play out, no one knows. But the courage those players showed in beating France and Colombia to remain in the competition as long as they did was a display of Olympian courage and determination that should never be forgotten.

Katz can: The weekend ended with the genial giant Ethan Katzberg almost casually winning the hammer throw with his first effort, which soared 84.12 metres. His competitors spent the next hour trying to match him but not one of them could even reach the 80-metre mark.

It was a resounding victory for a 22-year-old who is surely far from his peak. With Katzberg and the 17-year-old McIntosh to lead the way, Canada should have a strong core through Los Angeles, Brisbane and beyond.

Heroes: Ethan Katzberg, Janine Beckie, Jordyn Huitema, Jessie Fleming, Kailen Sheridan, Vanessa Gilles, Sophiane Méthot, Kylie Masse, Félix Auger-Aliassime, Gabriela Dabrowski, Eleanor Harvey, Canada’s women’s eight rowing team, Wyatt Sanford, Josh Liendo, Ilya Kharun, Julien Alfred,  Davis Alexander &&&& last but not least, Summer McIntosh — already great at 17.

Zeros: Bev Priestman, John Herdman, Steven van de Velde, Charlotte Dujardin, Novak Djokovic, Noah Lyles, genetics experts who failed high-school biology, Dan O’Toole, BetRivers, gambling ads during Olympic coverage, Bud Selig Jr., Claude Brochu, David Samson &&&& last but not least, Jeffrey Loria.

Now and forever.

jacktodd46@yahoo.com 

x.com/jacktodd46

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