The Gold Standard: De Grasse just scratching the surface
It may not be possible to catch all the best moments in a single day of the Olympic Games—but we’re going to try. Every day, we’ll award titles for standout achievements at (and around) Rio 2016, achievements that may or may not be recognized on the podium (and may or may not even be of an athletic nature).
Here are our picks for Day 9.
The gold medal for “what else did you think we would lead with?” goes to…
Usain Bolt is a hell of a drug. The first man ever to win three consecutive Olympic gold medals in the 100 metres, Bolt came from behind in the marquee event of these games to pass American Justin Gatlin over an exhilarating final 50 metres and cement his rightful standing as the world’s fastest man. He is legend.
Meanwhile, Scarborough’s Andre De Grasse, the youngest competitor in the final, won bronze with a personal best run of 9.91 seconds. De Grasse and Bolt share an interesting camaraderie that was often on display throughout the night. They embraced, slapped hands, patted backs and made small comments to each other before and after their races, and while this means, as a whole, nothing, it must be heartening for Canadian race fans to see the peerless veteran Bolt take the 21-year-old De Grasse under his wing.
#CAN has now won a medal on 9 consecutive days for the first time in #Olympics history….winter OR summer
— Sportsnet Stats (@SNstats) August 15, 2016
They are a fascinating contrast in styles, these two runners. Bolt’s top and bottom halves seem to function independent of each other. His lower hemisphere features smooth, efficient, graceful pistons pumping at perfect pace like they’re animated. Meanwhile, his upper half remains incredibly still save for those long, churning arms, and his head pivoting around from side to side, a grin wide as the ocean, providing photo-perfect moments and taking in the scenery as he zooms past.
De Grasse, on the other hand, puts his entire body into everything—straining, grimacing, and panting the entire way to the finish. He has to make little circles with his arms as he crosses the line to slow himself down. He’s so small, so compact, that everything must be earned. He doesn’t have cruise control grace like Bolt—only red line barrelling, which is just as effective, only different.
And that’s how Bolt cruised through his first two heats before the final with the relative urgency of the high-school-student-working-a-summer-job who makes your latte in the morning. He completed the task, but didn’t work particularly hard at it.
Andre De Grasse joins this list of #CAN sprinters to win an Olympic medal in Men’s 100m pic.twitter.com/ebfsLJmGoq
— Sportsnet Stats (@SNstats) August 15, 2016
De Grasse, meanwhile, ran with about as much effort as he could in all of his races, including the semis, when he strode a click behind Bolt but well ahead of the field, and the final, where he got lost in the pack early only to wrench out a personal best and a medal by the end. De Grasse is competing at his first Olympics and widely considered to be only chipping the paint of his true potential. Yet, on Saturday, he didn’t shy away from proclaiming, “I came out here to try to win gold. I feel like I have a good chance to take down these guys. I’m not going to wait until 2020. I’m going to do it now.”
He took down all but two, Gatlin and Bolt. And those are some pretty epic shoulders to be brushing as a relative newcomer to the game. It will be a long four years to wait until De Grasse gets his next shot at Olympic gold.
The gold medal for “Lanni Marchant is a madwoman” goes to…
Running a 42-kilometre marathon seems like a pretty unpleasant thing to do under any circumstance, but London, ON’s Lanni Marchant took it to the next level on Sunday.
Less than 48 hours after completing the 10,000 metres in a little more than 32 minutes (she came in 25th, closely behind fellow Canadian Natasha Wodak who finished 22nd), Marchant lined up for the marathon, finishing 24th with a time of 2:33:08.
That’s an awful lot of running. Marchant is the first Canadian woman to complete both races at the same Olympics, and with her Games now through she has certainly earned herself a reward meal of all the world’s carbohydrates.
The gold medal for “bad host nation publicity” goes to…
Rumours swirled Sunday morning as word came down that four American swimmers, including Gunnar Bentz, Jack Conger, Jimmy Feigen and 12-time Olympic medalist Ryan Lochte, were robbed at gunpoint the night prior. According to the United States Olympic Committee, the four swimmers were in a taxi on their way to the Olympic Village when “individuals posing as armed police officers demanded the athletes’ money and other personal belongings.”
Lochte gave an interview to NBC about the incident, explaining “the guy pulled out his gun, he cocked it, put it to my forehead and he said, ‘get down,’ and I put my hands up, I was like ‘whatever.’ He took our money, he took my wallet.”
Well, that’s not good. Every Olympic Games inevitably becomes an international roast, as foreign journalists gleefully pick apart the inevitable gaffes and local peculiarities of the host country. We’ve certainly heard enough about the colour of the water in the diving pool, the size of the in-stadium audiences, the quality of venue construction, and both the quality and quantity of sustenance made available to hard-labouring sports writers.
But one of the Games’ most recognizable athletes having a loaded gun pointed at his head is a whole other level of controversy and embarrassment for Rio, and lends credence to the athletes who skipped these games due to security concerns.
The gold medal for “biggest upset of the day” goes to…
Puerto Rico’s Monica Puig was far from the betting favourite coming into the women’s tennis competition at Rio. And even though she played great tennis over the last week, defeating Garbine Muguruza and Petra Kvitova to reach the gold medal match, Puig was still a heavy underdog against Germany’s Angelique Kerber, currently ranked No. 2 in the world.
But the unheralded Puig dominated a decisive third set, relentlessly attacking Kerber and coming away with the gold medal, the first ever in Puerto Rico’s 68 years of Olympic competition. Puig also became the first unseeded woman to win Olympic singles gold since tennis returned to the Games in 1988. No matter the colour of your currency, you’ve got to love a good underdog victory.
Article written by Arden Zwelling. Follow Arden on Twitter @ardenzwelling.
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