RIO DE JANEIRO — Raphael Gagne’s face was caked in mud, his body beaten up, but there was pride in his expression at the end of the men’s mountain bike race Sunday at the Olympic Games.
In a way, it was that kind of Olympics for the Canadian cycling team.
The team had some success, some near misses and some hard knocks, on the whole living up to expectations and leaving with a pair of bronze medals from a dozen competitions.
That’s about the number Cycling Canada set as a goal, although three would have been much nicer. Before Catharine Pendrel won a bronze medal in mountain bike on Saturday, things were looking a little thin.
“After yesterday, I’m breathing a lot better,” Canadian high performance director Jacques Landry said. “We’re pretty happy with the two. We would have liked three, but this is a good result.”
Canada also won a bronze medal in the women’s team pursuit in track cycling thanks to the efforts of Jasmine Glaesser, Allison Beveridge, Kirsti Lay and Georgia Simmerling.
Emily Batty finished fourth in the women’s mountain bike race, Tory Nyhaug was fifth in the BMX final and Tara Whitten placed seventh in the women’s road cycling time trial. Beveridge finished 11th in women’s omnium after crashing in the first of six points races.
The results were not as good in road cycling, the other track events and the men’s mountain bike, where Leandre Bouchard of Alma, Que., was 27th and Gagne, of Quebec City, was pulled from the race after getting lapped.
On the last day of the Olympics, on a track that was wet from overnight rain but was packed with fans throughout the course, the Canadians were in rough shape from the beginning.
“It was a hard race,” Gagne said. “I just felt off physically. I gave it all I had and I dug deep but I didn’t feel like I was at my best on the day. I was getting passed a lot in the early part of the race. That was my speed for today.”
Bouchard, 23, had a decent result in his first Olympics. He got caught up in traffic on several occasions and simply was unable to gain ground on the leaders.
That was a similar story in the women’s road race and time trials. Young athletes like Leah Kirchmann, Karol-Ann Canuel and Hugo Houle showed promise but also showed that perhaps their time to shine on the Olympic stage won’t come for at least another four years.
“There are some events where we could have been a bit luckier,” Landry said. “All in all, we are pretty satisfied with the overall outcome of these Games. In some cases we’re looking at it from a longer view, to get some younger athletes experience in Rio so we can look forward to Tokyo and onward.”
One of the big concerns for Canada is the fact that only one BMX rider even qualified to compete in the Olympics.
“In BMX we are looking at more development,” Landry said. “We have to go back to grassroots and just take it from the bottom and build it back up. It’s not good that we have only one good rider on the men’s side. It means we have no depth right now.”
Other programs are clearly stronger, but Landry wants to see improvement across the board over the next quadrennial.
“We have to stick to the basics in general, but there are some programs that are a bit further on and we can start looking at those marginal gains and see that we are getting closer and closer to the countries that are ahead of us.”
GOLD A ‘DREAM COME TRUE’ FOR SCHURTER
Narrowly losing out on a gold medal in London has been eating away at Nino Schurter for four years.
The Swiss mountain bike racer lost out in the last few metres in 2012 to Jaroslav Kulhavy of the Czech Republic and even though he is a five-time world champion, he desperately wanted to add Olympic gold to his sparkling resume.
He did that Sunday, winning the men’s mountain bike race at the OlympicS in Rio, outdistancing Kulhavy, of all people, by 50 seconds.
“It is a dream come true,” Schurter said. “I cannot believe it. I’ve been working four years for this gold. I’m so happy that everything went well. If I’m looking back, I needed silver in London to get back and be strong here. For me, it is the perfect story. I have bronze in Beijing, silver in London, and now gold in Rio. It is the perfect story.”
Nicolas Coloma of Spain won the bronze medal at the Olympic X-Park, finishing 1:23 after Schurter.
Twyman@postmedia.com
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