Canadian race walker Evan Dunfee can’t avoid the circus after rallying for a bronze medal in Sapporo

Opinion

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This article was published 05/08/2021 (1499 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TOKYO—Evan Dunfee is a two-time Olympian who’s competed in racewalk events around the world. So as he arrived at these strangest of summer Games, he said it didn’t bother him much that the Olympic experience would be thin on ancillary benefits. No sashaying into a grand stadium for the opening ceremony, no free tickets to see other events — it was no problem for Dunfee, the 30-year-old from Richmond, B.C.

“I’ve never lived for that, the pomp and circus and all that stuff,” Dunfee said.

Heck, Dunfee was going to the Tokyo Olympics fully prepared not to set foot in Tokyo’s Olympic Village, given how his event, the 50-kilometre race walk, was moved to Sapporo, about an eight hours’ drive north of Japan’s capital.

All that said, Dunfee said there was one circumstance where he’d happily partake in an Olympic side trip.

“The only way I’ll be in the village is the medal ceremony — if I win a medal I’ll be there,” Dunfee said.

So book the bullet train, stat. An ancillary excursion is in order. After Dunfee was down and seemingly out of medal contention with about two kilometres to go in Friday’s 50-km torture test, 19 seconds in arrears of third place and battling a cramping hamstring in crippling heat, the Canadian mustered a late kick for a long-sought spot on the podium. While televised coverage of the race didn’t pick up most of Dunfee’s key moments, he said he passed Portugal’s Joao Vieira for fourth place with less than 2 km to go before passing Spain’s Marc Tur for third place only a couple of hundred metres before the finish line.

The late-race heroics have become a trademark. Dunfee used a kick in the final 800 metres to win bronze at the world championships in 2019.

“I was joking, ‘One of these days the cameramen are going to learn to stick on me in the last kilometre,’ ” Dunfee said.

On a day when Dunfee’s body seemed at times to be betraying him — “I kept asking it for a little bit more and it was, like, ‘No’ — he found his second wind as he suffered through the final handful of kilometres thinking about his family, his girlfriend, and his late grandmother — “My nana,” Dunfee called her — the latter who always told him he had “wings” on his feet.

“For whatever reason, when I came around that top bend with about 500 metres to go I asked my body for a little bit more. And in that moment my body just went, ‘OK, here’s your next gear. Go for it,” he said. “It allowed me to pick up that pace and storm past Marc Tur for third place.”

On a sweltering day when Poland’s Dawid Tomala distanced himself from the field to win the gold medal by a whopping 36 seconds ahead of silver medallist Jonathan Hilbert of Germany, Dunfee’s triumphant charge could have been framed as a meting out of karmic justice.

Five years ago, Dunfee finished a heartbreaking fourth at the Rio Olympics in a controversial race. In that race a stretch-run burst saw Dunfee, running in fourth place, catch up to Japan’s Hirooki Arai, who clearly bumped Dunfee with a hip check that knocked the Canadian off his rhythm. Though Arai was initially disqualified, giving Dunfee the bronze medal, Japan won an appeal that reinserted Arai on the podium. And though Dunfee stood a decent chance of winning back that medal if he’d rolled the dice on a counter-appeal, he earned plaudits when he opted against a further challenge and allowed the decision stand.

Five years later, a man of integrity whose Twitter bio self-deprecatingly referred to himself as an “Olympic non-medallist” could now remove the “non.”

“Hopefully it means we can stop talking about Rio,” said Dunfee.

Then again, there’s no getting around talking about Rio.

“I love that moment because that moment’s given me a huge platform,” he said after Friday’s race. “Over the last five years I’ve been able to speak to 10,000 school kids in my local community and talk about the value of sport and what sport’s turned me into. Growing up, I was the kid who wanted to win. I defined myself by whether I won or lost. And I was kind of an a–hole. I was a sore loser. I was the kid who broke hockey sticks when we lost. I just defined myself by winning and losing.”

He credited an amazing group of coaches, including longtime mentor Gerry Dragomir, with helping him grow as both a big-stage performer and a person.

“Sport helped me grow, and learn and change and transform into somebody that could, in Rio, say, ‘No, I don’t need a medal to validate my success,’ ” Dunfee said. “To be able to have that story, to have that one moment I can relate to, that I can use as a crux to explain the journey or sport and inspire hopefully one or two people to live the magic of sport, that’s really cool. I’ll never regret that moment. It’s given me so much. But certainly getting this one, it means a lot.”

Not to say Dunfee’s finish was expected — a race that stretches most of four hours can be an unpredictable beast — but the conditions certainly played into his favour. Though Dunfee’s event, like the men’s and women’s marathons, was moved from Tokyo to Sapporo in an attempt to escape the big city’s notoriously humid conditions, in the end neither the northerly locale nor the 5:30 a.m. local start did much to mitigate the swelter.

As the race began the temperature in Sapporo was 25 C with 83 per cent humidity. In Tokyo at the same time, it was 25 C with 90 per cent humidity. By the race’s end, it was actually hotter in Sapporo, 31 C, than it was in Tokyo, where it was 30 C. For Dunfee, the difficult conditions were a recipe for a great race.

Two years ago at the worlds, after all, he’d produced a breakthrough bronze-medal performance in a locale synonymous with unbearable heat — the desert city of Doha, Qatar.

“To have it hot, have it humid, it’s what I wanted,” he said. “It still sucks. It’s really hard. But I know I perform well in these conditions. I was standing on the start line with a smile on my face. It doesn’t make it any easier. But I just knew.”

There was considerable science to Dunfee’s heat-beating strategy. Over the 50 km race, he said he was planning to consume something in the range of four litres of water — about a litre per hour. On top of that, he’d take in plenty of carbohydrates — liquid sugar, essentially, at a rate of as much as 90 grams an hour. That’s more than what’s contained in a couple of cans of Coke. And indeed, Dunfee’s carefully selected mixture of fuelling options on Friday included flat cola, among plain water and other drinks.

Said Dunfee before the race: “The more (carbs) you can get in there, the more your muscles use, the longer you can stave off that fatigue.”

Nobody staved it off like Tomala. After the early race leader Luo Yadong fell off his pace around the halfway mark, Tomala grabbed the lead with about 20 km to go and never really looked back. With 10 km remaining, he’d increased his advantage to nearly three minutes. But Dunfee found himself in excellent position among Tomala’s closest chasers, at times leading the pack, at times allowing others to go in front, but neverlosing touch. With 7 km to go, with Tomala off in the distance, his closest chasers numbered five, with Dunfee in the thick of the mix.

Five walkers for two medals; for Dunfee, it looked like the race was going to plan. But with 5 km to go, the Canadian began to trail Tur and Vieira. With 2 km to go, he found himself about 19 seconds back of a medal. And then somehow, he found that other gear.

In front of him he saw Vieira, who’d beaten Dunfee to the line for silver at the 2019 worlds.

“I was like, ‘Ah, I cannot lose to Vieira again.’ So I passed him,” Dunfee said.

And when he realized it was Tur in third place, he said he had visions of Rio.

“My brain went to, ‘Oh, come on — you can’t finish fourth again,’” he said.

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Thanks to a gutsy final push, Dunfee didn’t finish fourth again.

“I don’t need a medal to validate myself. I’m proud of what I accomplished today no matter what,” he said. “But god, I’ve been dreaming of this moment. I’ve been dreaming of this medal for 21 years. I’m just over the moon. I’m so pumped.”

So book the bullet train, indeed (or perhaps just hop a flight). An Olympic medallist who’s never cared much for the pomp and circus of global sport is about to make a special exception and happily attend a certain special ceremony. His medal presentation was scheduled for Saturday evening at Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium.

“It sounds like I’ll get to spend a night in the village. And who knows? Maybe I can persuade (chef de mission) Marnie (McBean) and the rest of the Team Canada to let me stay for (Sunday’s) closing ceremonies,” Dunfee said. “I’d love to get that experience. It’s icing on the cake … From the ceremonial point of view I could give it a miss, but from the opportunity to cheerlead my teammates and be a superfan of our Canadian athletes, it’s a no-brainer.”

Dave Feschuk is a Toronto-based sports columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @dfeschuk