Excellence, respect, friendship: Team Canada shows off Olympic values at Paris 2024
While medal victories might tend to dominate the headlines, there’s much more to the Olympic Games than winning and losing.
The three core values of the Olympic movement are excellence, respect and friendship. There’s no podium necessary for an athlete to display one, two or even all three of those traits.
Members of Team Canada have been demonstrating those values throughout Paris 2024. Here are a few examples.
Black and Olsen lift a competitor’s spirits
Ellie Black has had plenty of memorable moments in her career as a gymnast. Her latest one didn’t come on any apparatus; it came from the heart.
Black and Canadian teammate Shallon Olsen were captured consoling French gymnast Melanie de Jesus dos Santos after the host nation star had a tough time in the qualification round, missing out on advancing to the all-around final and the French team missed the team final at their home Games.
“I feel like we all kind of go through the same thing,” Olsen reflected a few days later. “We know how hard gymnastics is and we’ve all experienced disappointment in our own ways. So I think it was easy to relate to her because we’ve all been there at one point. So if I can do something to make somebody smile and uplift her, then that’s what I was going to do.”
“It was an amazing experience going out there and competing with France,” added Black. “That’s the greatest thing about sport is it brings us together. I’ve known Melanie for a long, long time. She’s a really good friend and I just wanted to remind her that it’s not always about the results. It’s who she is […] just reminding her that she she is enough and whether you have a perfect day or not, the sun will shine and it will come back out again.”
Dolci recovers from a scary moment
While athletes try to prepare for every possibility, artistic gymnast Félix Dolci couldn’t have expected what happened in the men’s all-around final.
The first-time Olympian was competing on the horizontal bar when his hand guard unexpectedly snapped, sending him hurtling to the mat in terrifying fashion. He got up, unhurt, as he received massive applause from the audience.
Since his fall was due to an equipment malfunction, he was later allowed to restart his routine. Would we call it bravery? Resilience? Determination? Whatever it’s called, it was certainly a show of excellence.
Ahmed has ‘no regrets’ in 10,000m
Values really shine through in moments of adversity, and that was surely the case for distance runner Mohammed Ahmed. The four-time Olympian ran the race of his life in the men’s 10,000m and looked poised to claim a medal.
But in the dying moments of the gruelling race, he was overtaken and would finish in fourth, just 0.67 seconds off the podium. Still, he immediately threw a celebratory arm around Uganda’s Joshua Cheptegei, who set an Olympic record and won gold.
“Honestly I have no regrets. I think I ran that really, really f—ing well,” he told CBC Sports after the race. “My legs are really, really dead. So, I did everything I could.
“These are the hardest Olympics, in the history of the Olympics. … Yes I’m disappointed, but I gave it everything I had.”
Playing for each other on the pitch
There were high hopes in women’s soccer, as Canada came into the tournament as defending gold medallists. But a drone-flying controversy sent the team’s head coach home in disgrace and led to a six-point deduction.
Many made the case that it was disproportionately punitive to the players, who weren’t involved in the situation. The players, however, relied on each other and pulled off a trio of dramatic wins in the group stage to reach the quarterfinals.
READ: Improbable journey in women’s soccer ends with heartbreak for Canada
“A lot has been taken away from us as players who have had nothing to do with any of the actions,” said defender Vanessa Gilles, who scored two game-winning goals. “The one thing that we can control, the one thing that is in our grasp is the pitch. That’s something they can’t take away from us, as much as they tried.
“So just sticking together and knowing that we can control that, and that if we go into that knowing that and believing in that, then the world’s our oyster.”
‘She worked so hard for this moment’
They didn’t face the same type of adversity as the soccer team, but the silver-medal-winning women’s rugby sevens squad showed off their own unbreakable bonds in Paris.
Krissy Scurfield was knocked out of the tournament after being injured in Canada’s opening match against New Zealand. Her injury meant she couldn’t join the team in the stadium for the gold-medal game, or on the podium afterwards.
But her teammates used her absence as motivation, and were thrilled that she was able to claim her silver medal after the fact when they were celebrated at Canada Olympic House.
Friendship prevails
Two straight fourth-place finishes at the Olympics are a tough pill for any athlete to swallow. But that’s the situation for diver Caeli McKay in the women’s 10m synchro event. She and Kate Miller came up just short of the podium in Paris.
“We ended up fourth today, but that doesn’t take away from all of our hard work and it doesn’t take away from our careers together and our journey and our value,” said McKay.
“She’s one of my best friends, so it’s nice to be able to be here together and have another shoulder to cry on together.”
Role model mom
In some ways, Paige Crozon’s path to 3×3 basketball was intertwined with becoming a mom. Crozon had been playing basketball in Europe, but after her daughter Poppy was born, those teams weren’t sure about having a single parent on the roster. But with 3×3 as a new discipline, perhaps there was an opportunity at home. A phone call between Crozon and Michelle Plouffe, her former university teammate, planted the seed of… “we could go to the Olympics!”
Their team culture is one rooted in friendship, respect, support, and fun–including support Crozon’s identity as a mom. Now Poppy is in Paris cheering on her mom and her teammates as their number one fan, and honourary fifth teammate.
READ: Momentum: 3×3 basketball player Paige Crozon sheds light on elite sport and motherhood
Career-best performance as birthday present
Sophiane Méthot had burst onto the international scene with a bang, winning bronze at her first world championships in 2017. But then came some difficult years, as she dealt with injuries and mental blocks that affected her air awareness — something incredibly important in trampoline.
But with great support behind her, she put it all together on the biggest stage. The day before her 26th birthday, she delivered the performance of her life to win an Olympic bronze medal.