August 4, 1996
Paddlers honor Canada with character
By KEN FIDLIN -- Toronto Sun
LAKE LANIER, Ga. -- Somewhere between the buses that never came, the ubiquitous Nike ads, the cowardly bomber, IBM's pathetic attempt at a communications system, the Dream Team and -- did I mention the buses? -- four-dollar bottled water, a basic concept was misplaced here at Buford and Bubba's Olympic Games and Flea Market.
The singular most impressive thing about these Games, probably the single most impressive thing about any Olympic Games, is the athlete. Not necessarily the performance. The athlete.
In Atlanta, they threw an Olympic Games and a trade show broke out. It was easy to forget the idealism, the principles that guide the vast majority of competitors.
But out here in the relative peace and quiet on the shores of Lake Lanier, where the rowers, and now the paddlers, ply their lonely trade, perspective is a staple. It is the fuel that shoots flimsy little boats across the water like they had propellers.
Renn Crichlow is a brilliant young man. He also is handsome, funny, sensitive, confident, has a body like Adonis and for 10 years he has been among the top kayakers in the world. I hate him. In a few years, after he's finished at Harvard Medical School, he's going to be a doctor.
Yesterday he competed for the last time with the Maple Leaf on his chest when he and his three Canadian teammates finished seventh in the K4 1,000 metres Olympic final. A day previous, he had failed to make the final in the K1, a personal disappointment, since he had taken a year off school to train for these Games.
On the surface, seventh place doesn't sound like much. Do not make that suggestion to Crichlow.
"We raced our very best," Crichlow said.
Do not misconstrue this. Crichlow is not one of those "I'm just happy to be here" types. He has competed fiercely and successfully on the global stage and was, in fact, the first Canadian to win a kayak gold medal at the world championships in 1991.
Yet he maintains a purity of motive, accepting sport in general and his sport in particular as a pursuit where the journey is as important as the destination.
"It has been hard for us to watch the NBC coverage down here," he said. "If all you did was watch that, you would think everyone won a gold medal.
"You begin to feel that the majority of athletes who commit themselves, give their very best effort and somehow fall short are not worth anything. That's the impression you get from watching NBC."
Canadian fan support was generous at Lake Lanier, drowning out most other nations. Maybe the fact that the United States didn't even get to a single paddling final, not one, was a factor. Now you didn't see a lot of that on NBC, did you?
"It was very special to have so many Canadians cheering," Crichlow said.
"For once in our lives we weren't out in the back woods toiling in anonymity."
See, Renn Crichlow doesn't need the world to stop what it's doing to applaud him to make his Olympic experience memorable. It was just a little emotional support from some folks who came a long way to follow his dream.
In the past few weeks I've met dozens of Canadian Olympians. One of the common denominators has been their dedication, not only to training and high performance, but to the same principles that will drive Renn Crichlow to be every bit as good a doctor as he has been an ambassador for Canada.
Three Canadian boats were in the finals yesterday and the closest Canada came to a medal was a fifth-place finish by the women's kayak fours -- Marie-Josee Gibeau, Alison Herst, Corrinna Kennedy and Klari MacAskill. They were less than 2/10ths of a second out of a bronze and had the race of their lives.
"It was so, so, so close," Gibeau said. "It hurts a bit, but it was our best race ever, so we can't feel bad."
The other two boats, Steve Giles and Dan Howe in the C2 1,000 and the men's kayak fours -- Crichlow, Mihai Apostal, Peter Giles and Liam Jewell -- finished well back.
"But we beat our own Canadian record by four seconds," Crichlow said. "There's honor in that as far as I'm concerned."
More honor than you may realize, Dr. Crichlow.
