Multisport athletes who compete at both Summer and Winter Olympics face a new challenge. Due to the one-year delay of Tokyo 2020, they have only a few months to prepare for the upcoming Beijing Winter Games.
Vincent De Haître, Derek Gee, Michael Foley and Jay Lamoureux repeated their win against Germany to finish 5th overall in the men’s team pursuit. This is the country’s best finish in the event since 1932, when the Canadians came 4th.
The race went exactly as planned, according to the strategy our Martin Cleary reported prior to the Olympics. De Haître got Team Canada off to a fast start, beginning in the front and taking the team through the first 1000 metres in 1:01.143. He then rolled off, since only three riders need to finish the race in the team pursuit competition.
The track program at the Olympics began on Monday, with Canada racing in the qualifying round for both the women's and men's Team Pursuit. The Canadian men had a strong showing in sixth place, with a time of 3:50.455, 0.481 seconds outside of their personal best, when they set a Pan American record in 2019. World champions and world record holder Denmark came within 0.342 seconds of beating their record to qualify first. Australia had to re-ride after one rider (Alexander Porter) broke his handlebars and crashed. Canada will race Germany in the next round tomorrow, after beating the Germans by 0.375 seconds.
Canada's Vincent De Haitre is about to embark on a unique journey. If all goes to plan, De Haitre will compete in track cycling starting Monday at the 2020 Tokyo Games, then in speed skating at the Beijing Winter Olympics early next year. That's two Olympic Games and two sports in a span of 180 days, but De Haitre remains undeterred.
"The goal is to prove that this is possible," De Haitre told ESPN.
Canada’s Vincent De Haître is a double threat — Quadzilla competes in both Summer, Winter Olympics
Officially, there are 36 instalments in the Godzilla movie franchise. Whether in the homeland of everyone’s favourite radioactive monster or in Hollywood, directors haven’t yet run out of opponents for the big guy.
Fresh from knocking off King Kong in his latest outing, maybe Godzilla fancies switching it up, taking his first run at a Canadian challenger. To make things easier, Quadzilla is already in Japan.
Vincent De Haître’s gargantuan legs may mark him out as a different life form but the Ottawa native is, in fact, just human. A human who happens to have a real problem finding comfortable trousers.
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