Manitobans savour Olympic magic in support roles ‘Top, top, top honour’ for senior officiating at raucous table tennis medal match; referee witnesses world-record pole vault; athletic therapist ‘can’t wait to do it again’ By: Danielle Da Silva Posted: 4:37 PM CDT Friday, Aug. 9, 2024

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This article was published 09/08/2024 (736 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PARIS — To Gregory Chan’s right was the French teenage table tennis wunderkind Felix Lebrun. To his left was the No. 4-seed, three-time Olympian Brazilian Hugo Calderano.

It was the bronze match of the men’s singles tournament, the hometown crowd at the Paris Arena Sud was going mad, and Chan had one of the best seats in the house: the assistant umpire’s chair.

The seasoned, blue-badge umpire from Winnipeg was officiating his first medal match of the Summer Olympics with head umpire Diana Santome of Peru. It was a privileged position the 69-year-old had long believed to be out of reach.

“Athletes, coaches — everybody dreams about coming to the Olympics, but since my age, around 10 years ago, I stopped thinking of coming to the Olympics,” Chan said.

“But sometimes miracles do happen.”

Chan is part of a small cohort of Manitobans on the periphery of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, lending their expertise as officials, coaches and support staff to keep athletes on track and the Games marching towards Sunday’s closing ceremony.

To be involved in an Olympic medal match was a “top, top, top honour,” Chan said with a laugh, thinking about his place amid the French fervour for Lebrun and his brother Alexis, who have attracted massive crowds to the table tennis arena.

“The environment there is hard to umpire because it was so loud and people are trampling their feet like a freight train going by without stopping,” Chan said. “Normally, in another tournament I would raise the hand and say, ‘Please, quiet down.’ Otherwise you can’t concentrate on playing.

“But it’s the home environment.”

Chan is no stranger to the extremes of officiating the best in the world. His resumé includes a World Championship, Pan Am Games and Commonwealth Games, but receiving the invitation to work his first Olympics was a milestone.

“The Olympics this is the cream of the cream of the crop,” said Chan, a vice-president in the Manitoba Table Tennis Association. “The best players in the world are here.”

“The Olympics this is the cream of the cream of the crop. The best players in the world are here.”–Gregory Chan

He also had the distinction of being the only North American table tennis umpire at the Summer Games, and probably the most senior — a detail he shares enthusiastically.

“If anything sudden happens, it’s the experience that manages whether you panic or you make a bad decision,” he said. “An experienced umpire will draw from past experience to neutralize the situation.”

And the challenging situations are almost certain to arise at the Olympics, as veteran athletics referee and Winnipegger Jane Edstrom was reminded on Day 7 of the track-and-field meet at the Stade de France.

It was the women’s pole vault final, 19 competitors had qualified and Edstrom and the officials team had managed to keep the marathon-length event running on time — until it wasn’t.

A computer-operated pole vault standard malfunctioned midway through the competition and needed to be replaced entirely. It would delay the final by about 20 minutes.

“I let the competition and the technical director know… I let them take care of their business and I went down to talk to the athletes,” said Edstrom.

“If you inform the athletes what is going on, and prepare them for possibly how long it will take and help them manage the situation then, you know what? It’s something that none of us wanted to happen, but now that it’s happened, how are we going to problem-solve to get around it?”

Officials responded swiftly, getting technicians in to deal with the faulty equipment as quickly as possible, all the while keeping the athletes updated on when they could expect to compete, she said.

Keeping a level of calm among athletes on the field is essential in such conditions, Edstrom said.

“I take on their problems and try to solve them and then let them worry about the competition,” said the gold-level referee.

Edstrom said she’s fortunate to have the responsibility. She previously officiated the Summer Games in Rio in 2016 and in Tokyo in 2021. Heading into this year, she was hopeful the World Athletics sports governing body would ask her back for a third time.

“The athletes are awesome, and the competition has been great, and the people I’ve met are outstanding,” she said.

It doesn’t hurt to be a small part of some great athletics moments either, Edstrom said. The retired phys-ed teacher had the luck of being stationed at the base of the pole vault Monday when Sweden’s Armand Duplantis broke the men’s world record at 6.25 metres.

“I always try to provide the best stage for the athletes to perform on,” she said. “So, if I can put them at ease, if I can ensure that everything moves as it should, it helps them to perform better.”

It’s a mindset also shared by Brandon’s Schad Richea. The athletic therapist was courtside with the Canadian men’s indoor volleyball team, tending to the many aches, pains and injuries of competition.

Paris was the final stop for Richea, who travelled the globe this year with the Maple Volleys — as the team is known — during their advance through the Volleyball Nations League, with stops in Turkey, the Philippines, Qatar, Portugal and Poland before landing in France for his first Olympic Games.

He was one of three Manitobans on the team, alongside setter Luke Herr of Winnipeg and attacker Eric Loeppky of Steinbach.

“They welcomed me pretty good, being the new guy,” he said.

Hearing O Canada played for the first time in the Paris Arena Sud before Canada’s opening match against Slovenia is a memory Richea said will stay with him forever.

“Sixteen thousand people in the arena and us singing as loud as we could — loud and proud. And that’s when I knew: it was on. We’re here,” he said.

But for all its breathtaking moments, life at the Olympics is no walk in the park, he said. The days are packed with meetings, practice, workouts, treatments, more practice, hour-long bus trips and, of course, the games.

It was normal to log over 22,000 steps a day, he said.

“Sixteen thousand people in the arena and us singing as loud as we could — loud and proud. And that’s when I knew: it was on. We’re here.”–Schad Richea

“The joke is it’s almost purposely made so you can’t do your job. It’s just so busy,” he said. “Everybody’s got the same intentions of trying to make their athletes the best, and treated, and recovered, and strength trained and practised… it was quite something.

“But if they asked us if we’d do it again? Absolutely. I can’t wait to do it again.”

And, of course, there’s also the bitter taste of defeat that’s part and parcel of Olympic life, he said.

The Canadians’ tournament came to an end against Serbia, losing three games to two on Aug. 3. The men’s volleyball team finished last in its pool and didn’t advance out of the preliminary round, where it ranked 10th overall.

Richea keeps the tournament in perspective: the team’s growth and success over the season was measurable and, as a bonus, there were no significant injuries.

“The result, perhaps, wasn’t what we wanted, but in the thick of it all we learned something from it and our program is growing,” he said.

“We have a good core group of professionals in all realms — whether it’s staff, whether it’s athletes, whether it’s at Volleyball Canada — that have the best interests of the program in mind… I think we’ll be making some noise moving forward.”

“It felt good to see that,” he said.

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca