We're Still At The Four-Front

It's been called the "tin medal" and Canadians, it seems, have become masters at collecting them over the years.
Add Perth's Mike Brown to the list of athletes sentenced to the dreaded fourth-place finish at an Olympic Games, after he finished an agonizing fourth in the men's 200-metre breaststroke final at the Beijing Games tonight. And there with it went Canada's last best shot at a swimming medal at these Olympics.
No need to tell Brown, who finished .09 seconds off the podium, how tough it was to take.
"That's about as frustrating as it gets," he told reporters after the race. "Fourth place is probably the worst spot you can get at the Olympic Games."
Canada's swimmers have been blanked in the Olympic pool since Sydney 2000.
"I would have loved the medal," said Brown. "The first medal for Canada (at the Beijing Games) would have been awesome to have. I couldn't pull it through but that doesn't mean we won't be having one soon."
Brown predicted "there will be lots of medals for Canadian athletes" before these Games are done. And this is a team, admittedly, that has most of its medal potential packed into the second week in Beijing.
No doubt Perth, Ont., is still proud of one of its favourite sons tonight. The pretty town in the Ottawa Valley couldn't have paid for better exposure than the CBC gave it this evening. We saw the Perth Aquatic Stingrays Club's website on air before the race (CBC also had a camera positioned in the town to capture some of the local celebrations, had their been a medal to cheer). Brown smiled afterward when reminded that, by improving his finish by two spots over Athens 2004, one of his sponsors back home has a $60,000 SUV waiting for him when he returns to Perth.
The one place, to be sure, that he'll always be a champion.
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What's the deal with the medal standings?
Look on CBC's Olympics website and you'll see China listed on top of the medals table because it's won the most golds so far at the Games. Many other media sites, though, put the U.S. first because its overall medal total is higher.
It's a regular debate at every Olympics. Personally, I think total medals wins. But whatever way you want to do it, let's just get everyone on the same page, can we?
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CBC Newsworld's Beijing Today offers a nice highlights roundup for those who couldn't stay up through the night to catch all the live Olympics action.
But the show is missing those feature reports that used to add that extra touch to similar Newsworld efforts at previous Games. Then again, I was always a fan of the late, lamented Sports Journal that shone for so many years on Newsworld (till the budget axe sentenced it to oblivion).
It's that spirit that, sadly, is noticeably absent on Beijing Today. Too bad.
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The dreaded glitch hit CBC during tonight's swimming coverage. The public broadcaster lost its feed during one of the women's 200-metre breaststroke semi-finals. CBC planned a repeat of that race as part of its swim package in Pacific Prime.