Athletes know that there will be hard days in their career, but it’s been a rough few days as Canada’s medal hopefuls in track have faced disappointments. Kris Westwood, director of high performance services with Cycling Canada shares some post-mortem thoughts on how the week has gone so far, as the athletes head into the final days at the velodrome on the weekend.
A stomach bug swept through part of the team
In the week leading up to the track events, a few members of the track cycling team came down with a stomach bug that was going around the athletes’ hotel. The Canadian Olympic committee dealt with the situation swiftly, disinfecting the hotel, making sure the team doctor was able to identify the bug. Luckily it was highly treatable and everybody got the antibiotics they needed in a timely manner, but did it have an effect on the outcomes of the races? “It’s really hard to say—obviously you can’t prove a negative, but obviously it was a bit of a stresser for everybody,” Westwood said, who mentioned that it was fortunate the athletes were given an antibiotic that has very limited side effects. “Everybody bounced back really fast, but the stress doesn’t help,” he said. “But we’re at the same hotel as New Zealand—they had a couple of cases—and they’ve been having some great results here, so I really don’t think we can say that that had a ton of effect on the outcomes.”
The women’s team sprint wasn’t prioritized
In an Instagram post, Lauriane Genest mentioned how the women’s team sprint wasn’t prioritized as an event. “We decided to really give it our all on the second run, and that’s what we did. The track is fast, we’re just not competitive in that event,” she said after the race.
Westwood explained that the women’s team sprint was a qualification pathway, but the team had never performed at a high enough level in that event to be realistic medal contenders. “That meant that when it came to preparing for the games, the training focus switched to the sprint and the keirin,” he said.
Strategic issues affected some race outcomes
In an Instagram post, Cycling Canada alluded to the fact that there were strategic issues that played to the athletes’ disadvantage on the day of the women’s keirin and the men’s omnium.
“I debriefed with the sprint coach Franck [Durivaux] and they both just waited a little bit too late, tried to go around the outside and just didn’t have the guts,”…
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