The Paris 2024 Olympics is turning out to be an interesting event for Canada with some players meeting expectations while some big names falling short of all hype.
Canada’s women’s eight rowing team arrived at Paris 2024 as defending champions. However, they couldn’t replicate their Tokyo 2020 performance as they had to settle for the silver.
🥈 Abby Dent 🥈
— NCAA (@NCAA) August 3, 2024
Rowing – Women's Eight 🇨🇦 Canada#OlympiansMadeHere x @umichrowing pic.twitter.com/aRQYz1iP5j
The Canadian eight had Jessica Sevick, Caileigh Filmer, Maya Meschkuleit, Kasia Gruchalla-Wesierski, Avalon Wasteneys, Sydney Payne, Kristina Walker, Abigail Dent and Kristen Kit in the team. They clinched the second spot at the Nautical Stadium of Vaires-sur-Marne with a time of 5:57.84, behind Romania.
Great Britain finished third but missed the mark against Canada by only .67 seconds, demonstrating the intensity of the competition. Even with a podium finish, the Canadian team felt disappointed at their performance, as they were not able to justify their nation’s support and efforts to the results they achieved.
“What I love about this group of women is when we get backed into a corner, we fight, and we fight together, we do it together,” said Kristen Kit to Olympic.ca.
“I saw an opportunity, and anything can happen in an Olympic final. We knew that going into the race and we seized that opportunity,” Kit added. “It’s never over until it’s over, and these girls fought. They were still fighting right until the line – we were pushing as hard as we could to catch Romania.”
Big Investment Didn’t Work Out at Paris 2024
The Canadian Sports Administration invested significantly in rowing for Paris 2024. Given only one medal from the contingent, it is certainly not ideal. After the Tokyo Olympics, Rowing ($11.6 million) was the third highest invested game in Canada after Swimming ($13.6 million) and Athletics ($13.8 million) but considering swimming yielded 5 medals and rowing garnered just one, it was disappointing.
However, it was an expected finish from Romania with their rising performances since the Tokyo Olympics. Taking the World Championship title twice in 2022 and in 2023, while Canada finished 3rd and 5th speaks volumes about their level of competition.
Sydney Payne who was part of the Tokyo triumph spoke to the media after the race and said, “It is feeling amazing and it’s hard to not compare both races but both of them we left everything we had out on the course and we gave it everything from stroke one so in that way they feel awfully similar and I just have immense pride for both races and both crews,”
Women’s rowing team from Canada would leave the Olympics with just a silver medal. Having Avalon Wasteneys, Kasia Gruchalla-Wesierski, Sydney Payne, and coxswain Kristen Kit from the gold medal crew in Tokyo 2020, everyone had high expectations from the team, but Romanians exceeded them with their persistence and hard work.
