This Monday, the 8th, a delegation of the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC), counting more than 30 people, began a series of visits to competition venues and the Olympic Village, in addition to the specific meetings with the Rio 2016™ Organising Committee. The visit aims to provide athletes with the conditions they need to perform their best and get the logistics operations details right, starting long ahead of time.

“There´s a little more than three years left prior to the Rio 2016™ Olympic Games and we´re already putting our planning strategy together. The visit is very productive. For the first time since the Athens Games (in 2004), a city will host all the competitions, which is good, but the city is very large. We´re getting to know the city better”, said the COC Teams Services Director, Derek Convington.

Derek is responsible for all planning for all Canadian team national federations, including authorisations and other details. This is his third visit to Rio de Janeiro as a COC professional. He and the Games Director, Carla Anderson, led the Canadian delegation visit, which counted the participation of high performance sports directors, coaches and competition leaders of some 17 sports.

Carla Anderson is responsible for all the Canadian team logistics and for organising the athletes in the Olympic Village. She visited the Village and the Rio Olympic Park in Barra da Tijuca and noted some positive points of Rio 2016™, like the fact that all the gymnastics disciplines will be held in the same place.

As per the logistics, Anderson commented: “Many of our professionals were here in Rio de Janeiro working for the Rio 2007 Pan-American Games. We´re familiar with the city; however, the Olympic Games are a very big competition and the city is growing every year, so it´s important to verify some details”.

The Canadian delegation started to arrive in Rio last Friday. On the morning of this past Monday, the Rio 2016™ Organising Committee did a series of presentations on different themes like accommodations, services in the Olympic Village, security and transport. Specialists in sports also gave talks.

In the afternoon, professionals of the Canadian Olympic Committee visited the Maria Lenk Aquatics Centre, venue for the water polo competitions, the Olympic Arena of Rio, venue for artistic, rhythmic and trampoline gymnastics, and other venues of the future Olympic Park of Rio, which will even receive basketball, cycling (track), handball, judo, swimming, synchronised swimming, taekwondo, tennis and Olympic wrestling, the Athlete´s Village and the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon, where the slalom canoeing and rowing will take place.

This Tuesday, second and last day of the official visit, a large group visited the Deodoro venues. The last specific meetings with professionals of each sport of the Rio 2016™ Organising Committee were held throughout the day.

Visits by members of the National Olympic Committees (NOCs) are frequent. On May 6th and 7th, for example, the NOC Open Day will be held, something like an Open Day for the NOCs, participating are representatives of 11 National Olympic Committees from five continents: Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe.
 

Trampoline gymnast gold medallist, Canadian Rosannagh Maclennan smiles between Chinese Shanshan Huang (silver) and Wenna He (bronze) on the London Games podium (Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

Canada won 18 medals in London

Canada won one more medal than Brazil did in the London 2012 Olympic Games. Canada won 18 in all: a gold medal, five silver and 12 bronze. Among the London team highlights are gold medallist gymnast Rosannah MacLennan, bronze medallist in the Judo under 81kg category Antoine Valois-Fortier, and swimmer Brent Hayden, who won the bronze medal in the 100m freestyle, competition in which the American Nathan Adrian won the gold medal by only a hundredth of an advantage over the swimmer in second place.

Swimming represents another silver medal for Canada with Ryan Cochrane in the 1500m, in which the Chinese national Sun Yang won the new world record with a time of 14min31s. Another London world record counted a Canadian on the podium, followed by the women´s cycling (track) teams, competition that held its Olympic Games premiere and ended with Canada in third place and Great Britain victorious at 3min14s051.

In freestyle wrestling, Canadian Tonya Lynn Verbeek won the silver medal to lose only to three- time Olympic champion, ferocious Japanese wrestler Saori Yoshida. The silver medal in the eighth competition with women´s rowing, after the United States, two time Olympic champions, also merits honourable mention.