July 28, 1996
Golden duo stands alone
By TERRY JONES -- Team Sun
LAKE LANIER, Ga. -- They get their own special place on the podium now, Marnie McBean and Kathleen Heddle.
Alone.
That's three. Three gold. And three of a kind, if they're that kind, beats any handful of medals any Canadian has held at the Summer Olympics before.
McBean and Heddle won two gold in 1992 at Barcelona, but they merely were a sidebar to Silken Laumann.
But after another gold yesterday, McBean and Heddle are Canada's all-time golden girls.
No Canadian of either sex has won three Summer Games gold medals before. Maybe now when McBean and Heddle go home, the Order of Canada will be waiting. That usually comes with an Olympic gold. But there were six women who won two golds in Barcelona who didn't get honored that way because somebody thought there were too many of them.
It's not that way today.
There's Marnie McBean and Kathleen Heddle. And nobody else.
While McBean and Heddle were disappointed for fellow Canadian rowers Laumann and Derek Porter, both of whom had to settle for silver yesterday, there was justice in McBean and Heddle standing alone, singing the national anthem and watching the flag go up.
They deserved this day.
If there is a freeze-frame definition for a will to win, it had to be the look on Heddle's face as she dug down for her final few strokes to hold off the girls from China and the Netherlands.
It was more ferocious than any linebacker you've ever seen. She sneaked a peak beside her, her head not moving, and that one picture was worth a thousand words and a gold medal.
"It might have been what Marnie said,'' Heddle said of the voice from the back seat. "I felt like there was nothing left in my tank. Marnie said, `Ten more strokes!' ''
McBean picked the number out of the air.
"We couldn't get rid of the Chinese and the Dutch,'' said McBean. "That was worrying me a bit. It felt like we were just hanging on.
"I was a stroke and a half through (the finish line) before I realized it. My first thought was that it was over. My second thought was that it hurt.''
You watch them row and you wonder where they find the joy. There are few athletes in the world who work harder than these two and their teammates, rowing three times a day almost every day. And when it's over, they don't have the strength even to smile.
They saved that for the podium.
"I enjoyed it this time,'' said Heddle. "This time, when they played the national anthem, we could hear each other sing.
"In Barcelona they cut our anthem off half way. Not today.''
McBean said they wanted to make sure they smelled the flowers this time, because four years ago they forgot.
"I made sure I paid attention to more,'' is how McBean put it.
Still, circumstances forced them to stay in control of their focus. After they won, they had to go back out on the water to practise for the fours final today. They didn't make it to the interview tent till two hours later.
"I want to go have a nap,'' said McBean.
The two almost refused to play into their own story line.
"What is a gold medal?'' asked McBean.
It's something you put in a drawer, the two suggested, neither wearing a medal around her neck, having stuffed them into equipment bags an hour earlier.
Both insist they don't row for gold.
And McBean didn't convince Heddle to come out of retirement two years ago "for things historical,'' as Heddle put it.
"What we were trying to accomplish was very personal," Heddle said. "Maybe it'll be great four years from now when we look back and wonder what Canadian can do it next.''
McBean doesn't know about her own future, but she can't see herself begging Heddle for another comeback in two years.
"I'm not that stupid,'' said McBean. After all, it took Rowing Canada forever to get the pair together in the first place, because, as McBean said, "I was too loud, she was too quiet.''
They're still the Odd Couple. But now their names have been welded together with gold for the ages.
