On the
second last day at the London Olympics, Canadian Marc de Jonge took home the
bronze medal in the K-1 200m race (Kayak). De Jonge won both his heat and semi
final on Friday to advance to the medal race today. Ed McKeever of Great
Britain won gold and Saul Craviotto Rivero took home silver for Spain.
The sole medal for Canadians at the London Olympics today
came from Richard Weinberger in the Men’s 10K Marathon (Swimming). The Victoria
B.C. native got off to an early lead, in the Olympics longest race, but was
beating out by Oussama Mellouli, from Tunisia (Gold) and Thomas Lurz, from
Gremany (Silver). Weinberger’s final time was one hour, 50 minutes and 0.30
seconds.
The Canadian
women’s national team took home the bronze medal in soccer against France,
after losing a heartbreaking semi-final against the States. Diana Matheson
scored in injury time to seal the win for the Canadians with a score of 1-0. In
other medal news Tonya Verbeek won her third career Olympic medal settling for
silver after losing to Saori Yoshida of Japan.
Adam Van
Koeverden won silver in the men’s K-1000 today at the London Olympics; he had
the lead for 750m of the race being beat by Norway’s Elrik Veras Larsen in the
end. Carol Huynh and Mark Oldershaw both earned bronze in wrestling and men’s
C-1 1000m, respectively. The three medals ups Canada’s total medal count to 14
overall through 12 days of competition.
Derek Drouin
is one of three men taking home the bronze medal in high jump. Drouin tied with
Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshim and Great Britain’s Robert Grabarz. The three men
made it to a height of 2.29m and failed all three of their attempts at 2.33m.
Derek is the participating in his first ever Olympics for Canada and he earned
Canada’s first medal in high jump since Greg Joy earned silver at Montreal 1976
It took a
week but that doesn’t make it any less sweet. Rosannagh Mclennan took first place
and Canada’s first ever gold medal in the women’s trampoline. Also in Canadian
medal news, Ryan Cochrane won the silver medal in the men’s 1500m freestyle swimming
event, and the team of Gillian Carleton, Jasmin Glaesser, and Tara Whitten
claimed a bronze in women’s team pursuit(cycling). Canada now has six bronze
medals and ten medals overall putting us in 11th in overall medal
count.
The women’s
eight in rowing won a silver medal finishing behind the USA. Although the medal
wasn’t exactly what the women wanted they took joy in knowing that one of their
own, Lesley Thompson-Willie, became the first Canadian athlete to win a medal
in five different Olympics. The 52 year old rower has been a part of the
national rowing team in seven games winning medals of all different colors. After
day six the rowers added the second silver for Canada of these games increasing
the overall total to seven medals.
Canada got
the day started with the returning gold medal men’s eight rowing team landing
team Canada their first silver medal of these games. They had to rally in the
last stages to pass Great Britain and try and make a run at the eventual gold
winning German team. The other medalist on day 5 was Brent Hayden, claiming his
first career medal, earning bronze in the men’s 100m freestyle.
Canadian's had a good day at the London Olympics today, netting three more bronze medals, and bringing Canada's total to four medals. Antoine Valois-Fortier (Judo), Christine Girard (Weightlifting), and the team of Roseline Fillion and Meahgan Benfeito (Synchronized Diving) all took home third place in the respective events. Christine Girard even became the first Canadian women to ever medal in weightlifting in any Olympics ever.
It's only the second day of these XXX Olympic Games and Canada has it's first medalists. Emilie Heymans and Jennifer Abel took bronze medal in the Synchronized 3m springboard. The bronze not only secured Canada's first medal it also ensured that Heymans became the first diver to medal in four consecutive games.
With the Olympics in London under way, I was thinking about
a few possible events that would maybe draw in and keep my attention a little
longer than, let’s just say, Horse Jumping. I came up with a few ideas that
would not only be fun to see in the Olympics but could also possibly bolster
the ratings.
Break Dancing
It’s pretty much rhythm gymnastics, I would even go as far
as saying it’s harder. There are already world wide competitions, so you wouldn’t
need to create any rules. Not only that, but breaking is huge all over the
world.
Slamball
I don’t care how, but I need for Slamball to become popular.
Slamball is easily one of my favorite sports but has never taken off.
Chess-Boxing
I have a feeling that boxing fans would not like to see this
change. But for those of us who are leaning more to the MMA style fighting this
might draw up some interest. You ever been punched in the head a couple times,
then been asked to make a fast and logical chess move? Yea, me neither, doesn’t
seem to hard.
Beer Pong Dunking
Not Beer Pong. No, I want to add the single part of Beer
Pong that looks exciting. You could make it a distance event or you could even
judge on difficulty and style of dunk.
Belly Flopping
We already give out medals for smallest splash (actually it
has a lot more to do with the dive that competitors do, but for the sake of
this argument all you do in diving is make a small splash). You could probably bring over a lot of events
from the Hillbilly Olympics, seeing as how every country has their own version
of Hillbilly’s.
With the Olympics in London starting Friday, I figured I
should find a couple of videos to get everyone in the mood for these Olympic Games.
Well you are in luck I found more than a couple and here they are. Enjoy.
The USA Men’s National Basketball
Team looks pretty good
Who knew Rhythmic Gymnastics was this
intense?
Handball can get kind of crazy
BMX cross is always entertaining
Did I mention Women’s Beach
Volleyball?
Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt will be
there
So will Michelle Jenneke!
Visa puts out some good Olympic
commercials
Oh Yeah, the Canadian Senior Women's
National teamis doing this...
