Awe-inspiring and powerful: The best moments from Tokyo 2020, from the perspective of Postmedia’s Olympic team

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Listed here are the perfect moments of the Olympics, together with a couple of insights from the Postmedia Olympic Group.

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When Damian Warner gained gold and set an Olympic file in decathlon
As a Londoner, these Video games had been two weeks of chest-puffing satisfaction. Hoops vet Miranda Ayim was a flagbearer. Maggie Mac Neil gained Canada’s first gold. Susanne Grainger helped restore rowing excellence within the girls’s eight. Jessie Fleming was fearless from the spot. However Damian Warner’s file 9,018-point decathlon did it for me. It’s proof of what can occur when a neighborhood believes in its youngsters. Warner went from monosyllabic, basketball-playing teen to a well-spoken and humble gentleman who made Olympic historical past. His coaches now had been his highschool academics at Montcalm. He knew nothing about his sport when he began out, however had a burning want to be taught. For practically all of his profession, he has stayed and skilled in his hometown near household and pals. When the pandemic struck, he spent the winter figuring out at an historic hockey rink. Figuring out how a lot he detests the decathlon’s 1,500-metre finale, it was unbelievable to see him on the ultimate lap roaring to the end in an effort to grow to be the fourth man in historical past to interrupt the 9,000-point barrier. He’s one of many nice athletes within the nation’s historical past and now everybody is aware of it. The perfect factor about Warner is it gained’t change him one bit.

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— Ryan Pyette, London Free Press reporter

Canada’s first feminine sport climbing Olympian smashes private finest, units Canadian file
For Canadian sport climber Alannah Yip, there’s no motivation fairly just like the adrenaline and stress that comes with competitors. And when she stepped as much as the 15-metre velocity climbing wall at Aomi City Sports activities Park, it had been a yr and a half since she final competed, a championship the place she snagged one of many few remaining berths for her sport’s Olympic debut.

Away from the competitors highlight, she’d pumped months of labor into her efficiency in velocity – one in all three sport climbing disciplines within the Tokyo 2020 mixed occasion, and starkly totally different from the opposite two – and had been getting progressively quicker within the earlier week and a half of coaching in Japan.

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“It’s been a extremely fascinating journey. But it surely’s not my favorite self-discipline,” Yip instructed Postmedia. “So additionally behind my head, it’s like: ‘That is the final time you’re going to do that. Like, final go, finest go. Let’s present your finest.’”

And so she did – twice. With a time of 8.17 seconds on her first velocity climbing run and seven.99 on her second, Yip shaved practically half a second off her private finest, and established a brand new Canadian file.

— Taylor Blewett, Ottawa Citizen reporter

Noah Lyles lets every part out after profitable bronze
After profitable bronze within the males’s 200m, American sprinter Noah Lyles knelt on the Tokyo monitor, filled with emotion. He used his Olympic platform to speak about his struggles with despair: “In the event you see me in an enormous mild, I need you to know that it’s okay to not really feel good”, he mentioned, “you possibly can exit and discuss with any individual professionally and even get on treatment”. Lyles continued the dialog amongst Olympians concerning the significance of psychological well being, one other step towards breaking this stigmatization.

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— Phoebe Rotman, Postmedia Olympics intern

Sifan Hassan’s second of glory within the 1500m heats
I like monitor and subject, and it brings me nice pleasure throughout the Olympics when everybody in my circle turns into obsessive about athletics for these two weeks throughout the summer time. Watching the Olympics in any respect hours means you find yourself viewing lots meaningless preamble, just like the preliminaries for the 100m. Certain, one thing might occur. However one thing might additionally not occur. It’s by no means predictable.

So, I wasn’t anticipating a lot after I tuned into the ladies’s 1500m heats one Sunday evening. Sifan Hassan is a Dutch runner who was attempting to win gold within the 1500m, 5,000m, and 10,000m. However she fell on the final lap of the 1500m of her warmth. Dream over. Besides that it wasn’t — she went from being sprawled out on the monitor for a couple of seconds to operating her face off to get again to the entrance. She gained her warmth. I’ve by no means seen something like that. She’s exceptional.

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— Erin Valois, Olympic Editor

Canada wins silver on the first ever girls’s canoe C1 200m
On August 5, 2021, on the Tokyo Sea Forest Waterway, I used to be pleased to see a second in sport that’s lengthy overdue: girls with canoe paddles of their fingers, boats lined up on a start-line, on the sting of an Olympic closing.I grew up in a paddling membership in Nova Scotia, a province of lakes, the place dash canoe kayak has a depth of participation, ability and fervour unseen in the remainder of the nation.  Nova Scotia has despatched greater than a dozen canoe kayak athletes to the Olympics: Mark de Jonge, Karen Furneaux, Andrew Russell, Stephen Giles, Genevienve Orton… the listing goes on. My childhood summers are a blur of weekend regattas, morning dash practices on the water and winters spent within the weight room.

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The tales of the underdog and the decided shine brightest
Right here’s to the brilliance of the brand new family names in Canada; Stephanie on the pitch, Penny within the pool, Andre and Damian on the monitor. All spellbinding and good in their very own method, worthy of nationwide satisfaction on a regular basis, not simply each 4 years when Canadians get up to the Olympics.

Outdoors of the Maple Leaf moments, although, it was the tales of the underdog and the decided that shined brightest. After comparatively unknown Tunisian 400 metres freestyle swimmer Ahmed Hafnaoui caught his competitors napping, rising from the skin eighth lane to steal the gold, the celebration was as spirited as his closing lap dash. For pure shock worth, Austrian bicycle owner Anna Kiesenhofer takes the cake, the highway rabbit who refused to drop out whereas staying forward of the remainder of the pack, who had been completely unaware, believing they had been racing for gold. Then there’s the Olympic spirit within the legs and coronary heart of Dutch runner Sifan Hassan. Hassan crashed to the bottom within the closing lap of her 1,500 warmth when the runner in entrance of her tripped. From there, Hassan dusted herself off and handed the 11 runners forward of her to win the warmth and advance. In the end, Hassan went on to win the bronze within the 1,500 metres, to associate with her gold medals within the 5,000 metres and the ten,000 metres. Humorous, generally, how profitable a bronze medal will be extra memorable than profitable gold.

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— Ken Warren, Ottawa Citizen reporter

Canada’s girls’s baseball workforce, on the Olympics for a one-year revival, wins bronze
Canada’s girls actually did essentially the most these Olympics. Whereas they dominated the nation’s medal rely, the ladies’s softball workforce had one other load to bear: Since final that includes on the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the game was introduced again in Tokyo — however only for these Video games. It’ll be on the sidelines when the cauldron is lit in Paris three years from now, and for the foreseeable future.

For the Canadian workforce that positioned fourth 13 years in the past, it was now or by no means. They usually delivered.

The event featured a pair of soul-crushing moments for the Canadians: back-to-back 1-0 losses to the U.S. and Japan sunk their plans of displaying they not solely belonged on the high, however might take down the game’s titans. Nonetheless, they got here inside a hair of doing so.

When their final 9 innings of Olympic baseball arrived within the bronze medal sport, they acquired it finished with a 3-2 win over Mexico. Watching playerd who waited 13 years to get again to the Olympics and, by means of no fault of their very own, might by no means be allowed to compete on that stage once more (please, take a second let that soak in) was an attractive and transferring factor to witness — scenes solely the Olympics are in a position to produce.

— Matt Scace, Postmedia Olympics intern