Did you know Canada means ‘Bronze’ in Elvish? Probably not, because I just made that up but the sentiment is there. Given that fake definition, Mark de Jonge certainly refused to be anti-Canadian on Saturday morning as he paddled his way to a bronze medal in the K1 200m Canoe Sprint which required photo review to confirm the final standings.
Upon that further review, de Jonge’s time of 36.657 seconds was good enough to net him a medal after a fascinating training period leading up to the games.
De Jonge dropped out of the Canadian program after he didn’t qualify for the Beijing games as a member of the K4 500m team and left to pursue his career in civil engineering. When the Olympics changed the sprint event from the 500m to the 200m de Jonge, a sprint specialist, took a leave of absence from his job to give the games one last kick at the can.
Here we are with medal in tow.
For those of you who like to count things, the bronze from de Jonge gives Canada 18 medals at the London games, putting them even with the medal count at Beijing 2008. The kicker there, of course, is that Canada had three gold medals in Beijing which isn’t a ton, but still three times as many as they do in London.
Conventional logic, which was conveniently invoked at the Vancouver games in 2010 when Canada had a bucketload of golds, is that the country with the most golds has won the medal count. This may make some graphs you see in coming days inaccurate, but we’re flexible with self-evaluation.
If bronze ever becomes the most valuable metal on earth, Canadians will be lighting cigars with money for a long time after London 2012.
