Olympic Games improvement

London 2012

London, UK – Athletics Canada’s objectives coming in to the 2012 Olympic Games were to improve on Beijing’s showing of one medal and to improve on the sixteenth place finish in the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) country ranking.

The team closed out the 2012 Games today with one medal by Derek Drouin of Corunna, Ont., eight top 8 finishes, twelve top 12 finishes and seventeen top 16 finishes. Overall the team placed 15th in the IAAF country ranking with 22 points.

The team was so close to capturing a second medal when the men’s 4×100-metres relay team crossed the line third in the final behind Jamaica and the United States. Unfortunately a lane violation resulted in a disqualification and loss of the bronze.

Additionally eight personal bests were set as well as a Canadian record by Inaki Gomez of Vancouver, B.C., in the 20-kilometre race walk.

“While we might be tempted to define our success based on these ten days of athletics, in reality we have been building a team in preparation for London for the last four years,” said Alex Gardiner, Olympic Games Head Coach. “The results here are one chapter in the story and now we are writing another one for RIO with a bigger cast of athletes who have competed hard and succeeded at these Olympic Games. We will be better and deeper and more experienced in full knowledge the rest of the world will be trying to do the same.”

Martin Goulet, Chief High Performance Officer, “We are proud of our results and our level of confidence coming out of these Games is high. The team embraced the Canadian Olympic Committee’s motto of; fierce, relentless, world class, proud and unbreakable. We saw a great example of the motto in action yesterday by our relay team. This has been made possible by the outstanding support from Own the Podium, specifically in the case of the relay. OTP’s support of this program has lifted it back to be one of the best in the world, the end result wasn’t a medal but the statement was made that Canadian sprinters and relay are back.”

Games comparison – 1996 to 2012

	Atlanta	Sydney	Athens	Beijing	London
IAAF rankings (points)	24	10	11.5	23	22*
IAAF rankings (position)	17	35	34	16	15*
Podiums	2	0	0	1	1
Top 8	4	3	5	5	8
Top 12	6	7	8	8	11

*For IAAF rankings purposes the IAAF does not count disqualifications, thus the men’s 4×100-metre relay is not included in these number as no point is earned (not the same as an 8th place finish).
Top 8 placings

Name	Event	Finish	Age
Derek Drouin	High jump	Bronze	22
Dylan Armstrong	Shot put	5th	31
Damian Warner	Decathlon	5th	22
Phylicia George	100mH	6th	24
Jessica Zelinka	Heptathlon	7th	30
Jessica Zelinka	100mH	7th	30
Michael Mason	High jump	8th	25