Roller-coaster to Tokyo ends with a paddle to the podium for duo, helping Canada set record with 23 Olympic medals

Opinion

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This article was published 06/08/2021 (1498 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TOKYO—For all the life-enhancing benefits that can come with being a member of a team, there’s a significant complication attached to being one half of a two-member unit.

For Katie Vincent, the Mississauga canoeist, being 50 per cent of Canada’s top pair in the C-2 500 metres has meant she’s spent the bulk of the two years leading up to Saturday’s Olympic final wrapped up in a tangled drama far beyond her control.

It’s meant that, while crewmate Laurence Vincent-Lapointe could provide no guarantee she’d even make it to these Olympics thanks to a positive out-of-competition drug test in 2019 and a headline-grabbing saga that followed, Vincent has been, by extension, a passenger on the same emotional roller-coaster.

But the ride, if it was at times stomach-turning, came to a happy enough end on Saturday morning at the Sea Forest Waterway.

With a furious charge in the race’s latter half, Vincent and Vincent-Lapointe captured Olympic bronze to give Canada its 23rd medal of the Games — a new national record for a non-boycotted Olympics. In women’s sprint canoeing’s first Olympic go-round — this despite men’s canoeing being a five-ringed staple since 1936 — Canada’s top duo finished behind gold medallists China’s Sun Mengya and Xu Shixiao, the reigning world champions in the event, and Liudmyla Luzan and Anastasiia Chetverikova of Ukraine, who won silver.

“To come away with a bronze today was really special,” Vincent said. “We stuck to our plan throughout the race, so to see it come through at the end, kind of the way we hoped it would — obviously, we were going for gold. But it felt so good, especially after everything in the last few years. So we’re really grateful and just so happy.”

Said Vincent-Lapointe: “It just feels like this is what I’ve been waiting for all my career, basically. I’m just so relieved. So relieved to have done it and to be finished with this chapter. These Games, I’ve waited long, long, long (time) for them, and I’ve given everything that I have.”

Two days after Vincent-Lapointe loudly announced her return to the world stage by winning silver in the C-1 200 metres — a race in which Vincent, in an outside lane, said she was undone by a crosswind and finished eighth — it had to be satisfying for Vincent to get a piece of a podium. Certainly she’s stood alongside Vincent-Lapointe through less glorious moments.

The 25-year-old Vincent was forced to watch from the wings while Vincent-Lapointe, after testing positive for a banned muscle builder in the summer of 2019, was suspended from competition and forced to miss the 2019 world championships, which doubled as an Olympic qualifier. With Vincent-Lapointe out, that meant Vincent was out, too — out, at least, of the event the pair had been dominating, winning back-to-back world championships in 2017 and 2018 and breaking their own world record.

For Vincent and for Canada, there was simply no replacing Vincent-Lapointe, a 29-year-old veteran of the sport who’s won 13 world championships. There wasn’t a bench from which to pluck a substitute with a similar resume; the depth chart of athletes of Vincent-Lapointe’s calibre in Canada ran precisely one deep.

The only thing to do was wait and hope that Vincent-Lapointe’s insistence she’d never ingested the banned substance could be taken at face value, and that Vincent-Lapointe’s vigorous legal defence would pay dividends. It finally did in January of 2020, when Vincent-Lapointe’s lawyers were able to prove that the banned substance had entered her system via the bodily fluids of her ex-boyfriend.

That still didn’t mean Tokyo was a sure thing. There was the pandemic to deal with. There were qualification complications. It was only a little less than a month ago that it became a sure thing that Vincent-Lapointe would compete here.

And then there was another nuance; the fact, for all those months that Vincent-Lapointe languished in limbo — and for all the restrictions the pandemic brought upon Vincent’s career as a C-1 athlete — the once-dominant duo was accumulating rust.

“I haven’t raced internationally since later 2019 so to come out and know we still have some juice in us is pretty good,” Vincent said in the lead-up to Saturday’s final. “And it is good to know that the hard work is still paying off, although we haven’t been lined up against some of the girls. I am looking forward to (the finals).”

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In some ways, just getting to the start line was a triumph that couldn’t be taken for granted.

“We are both very honoured and proud to be here, given all the turbulence along the way. We are both just super amped up and happy to be here,” Vincent said in the lead-up to the race. “It’s been turbulent for both of us. I think we’ve stood with each other the whole way, that’s as much for me as for her. I’m just proud of her (for winning silver in C-1) and hoping we can carry that momentum into the C-2.”

On the last day of canoe racing at the Olympics, after crossing the halfway mark of the race languishing in fifth place, Vincent and Vincent-Lapointe somehow found late momentum. In doing so they affirmed a longtime partnership that, as much as it’s been complicated, is now significantly more decorated.

“I understood in the last few years that working by oneself is good, but working as a team, and a good team, is even better,” said Vincent-Lapointe. “I’m just really proud and thankful to everyone who has worked with me for this goal … And I’m super-proud that I was able to finish this on such a great note with Katie. It was worth everything. But I’m tired now. I need a big rest.”

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