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Newsletter By Jackson Starr, Adam Beauchemin, William Bailey, Martin Cleary, Dan Plouffe & Kaitlyn LeBoutillier
Ottawa’s Eric Peters earned a victory of the most epic variety to advance to the final 16 of the Olympic men’s individual archery competition today on the grounds of Les Invalides hotel in Paris.
After qualifying in 36th the day before the Olympics officially opened, Peters had his first elimination matches of the Games. In his first match, Peters engaged in tight battle with Ilfat Abdullin of Kazakhstan. Tied 4-4 through four sets, Peters won the contest in the deciding fifth set 28-26 to setup what proved to be an even closer battle in his next match.
“For the most part, it’s the Olympic Games, everyone here is going to be a tough match. There are no such things as easy wins here,” Peters said via Archery Canada. “My first match went to 4-4, then there was the heat, and my experiences of being on a stage like this more recently, and with the crowd on my side, helped me to tame the nerves and shoot the arrows when it mattered.”
In his second match of the day, Peters faced the #4 seed, Dhiraj Bommadevara of India. Bommadevara posed a tough challenge for Peters out of the gate, taking the first set. Peters quickly answered back with two bullseyes in the second set to tie the score up 2-2, but fell behind again with a loss in the third set.
Both competitors hit all three bullseyes in the fourth set, putting Peters in a must-win situation in the final set. The 27-year-old responded with his sixth consecutive bullseye to edge Bommadevara 30-29. That forced a single-arrow shootout to decide it all, with the closest to the centre to be declared the winner.
The in-stadium announcer fully embraced the opportunity to build the suspense of the moment with a spectacular setup speech:
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“Only one of the two will make it forward,” he bellowed. “The other one’s campaign will end right here tonight and the winner will sail forth to round of 1/8.
“Two men on a mission to be the best they can be. It’s all going to come down to one single shot. A dividing moment for their Olympic campaign, Paris 2024. The power of now. The power of what we are about to witness.”
The two competitors offered contrasting energy before their big shots. Peters and his coach were smiling, laughing and nodding – eating it all up and pumping up the crowd. Bommadevara was all business, full focus. The Indian shot first and hit a 10, but near the outer circle, measuring 54.5 mm from the centre, to leave a small opening.
Peters stepped up and fired his shot from 70 metres away, and landed just 36.1 mm from the middle to take the sudden-death showdown.
“This is the biggest crowd that archery may have ever seen,” underlined Peters, who broke through to win a silver medal at last year’s world championships. “It’s incredible. It isn’t something we get to experience often in the sport, and just having this atmosphere, it’s something else.”
Lois Betteridge misses canoe slalom semis by 1 place
Whitewater paddler Lois Betteridge experienced the other side of a tight result in her women’s canoe slalom competition.
The 26-year-old Olympic rookie was the second of all competitors to take to the course and set a time of 120.22 in her first heat, while accumulating eight penalty seconds for touched gates.
In her second heat, Betteridge improved on her time, but still took six seconds of penalties for a total time of 115.60. While that was a better time in comparison to her first, it was not enough to get her through to the semifinal round for the top-18. A clean run would have scored her a qualifying time, but instead she took 19th.
“I was pretty happy with parts of my paddling,” Betteridge told Ottawa Sports Pages reporter Jackson Starr after her competition. “The course is fairly straightforward. Some tactical elements, and you had to nail all of them, and I did okay, I just had way too many touches and I wasn’t able to absorb the time penalties.”
Though she didn’t jive with some of the gates, Betteridge still enjoyed getting to race on the new course.
“The course was built for the Olympics,” noted the Ottawa River Runners product. “They set a really nice course, the course designers. I have good things to say about the course. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to undo a couple of touches on both runs.”
This was the first experience for Betteridge competing in front of an Olympic crowd, an opportunity she missed for the Tokyo Games three summers ago. It also came on another sweltering hot day in Paris, with temperatures reaching an estimated 32°C.
“It’s spectacular,” Betteridge highlighted. “The crowd is amazing, and it’s pretty special to race in front of so many people in so much noise, it really pulls you down the course. So even if it wasn’t my best kayaking, or canoeing, it’s one of the coolest experiences I’ve ever had.”
Gaby Dabrowski wins tiebreak to advance to mixed doubles quarters
Rounding out the day for Ottawa athletes was Gabriela Dabrowski. In her second straight day of competition after two days of postponements, Dabrowski joined Felix Auger-Aliassime in the first round of mixed doubles action. The pair went up against Heather Watson and Joe Salisbury from Great Britain as the sun began to set at Roland-Garros.
It was a very close match on both ends, with teams trading games throughout and struggling to find a break point throughout the first set. Canada was eventually able to break the British duo and went up 5-2 in the set. The British pair didn’t go down easily though, battling back to break Canada and tie the set at 5-5.
After an ace from Dabrowski to make it 6-5 Canada, good teamwork and cohesion saw the pair come away with the set win at 7-5 to take a 1-0 lead in sets. Salisbury and Watson were able to battle back though, taking the set 6-4 to set up a first-to-10-points tiebreak.
Both Auger-Aliassime and Dabrowski came up with some terrific shots in the tie break, picking up five points off Great Britain’s serves. With success while serving as well, the Canadian duo dominated the tiebreak 10-3 to win the match 2-1 in one hour and 42 minutes.
New Gee-Gees rugby coach will bring Olympic silver medal into new role
Though there were no Ottawa players selected to the Canadian women’s rugby sevens team for the Paris Olympics, it was the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees’ incoming women’s rugby coach Jack Hanratty who was on the sidelines for Team Canada’s Cinderella run to the Olympic silver medal. The Gee-Gees officially announced Hanratty’s hiring in March, with his arrival expected in advance of this fall’s varsity season.
Ottawa Olympians in action on July 31:
Preview: Teenage diver Kate Miller ready for world’s biggest sports stage
Wednesday will mark the busiest day yet for Ottawa Olympians in Paris, with five competing throughout the day. It all gets going bright and early at 5 a.m. ET off the diving platforms with Kate Miller set to make her Olympic debut at age 19.
In less than two years, Miller has gone from a wide-eyed rookie who was in awe of Canada’s top divers, to a confident world-class athlete ready to make her Olympic debut alongside a veteran who’s become a sister.
The 19-year-old is set to compete alongside Calgary’s Caeli McKay in the women’s 10-metre platform synchronized event, and she’ll also take part in the individual 10 m competition a few days later in Paris.
“Training has been going really well and I’m just excited to really enjoy the experience of being there,” underlines Miller.
Miller started diving alongside the 25-year-old McKay in late 2022, and the two divers have made the most of their short time together. In 2023, the duo competed in their first World Aquatics Championships as partners and placed eighth in the 10 m synchro. The event was Miller’s first senior-level worlds, though she did previously win a 2022 world junior 3 m synchro gold with another teammate.
Miller and McKay later went on to win silver medals at the 2023 Pan American Games in Chile and both the 2023 and 2024 World Aquatics Diving World Cup Super Final.
And the biggest result of the bunch came in February of this year when they placed sixth at the 2024 World Championships in Doha, Qatar to qualify for the Paris Games.
“We’re more of an experienced pair now. We’ve been doing it for a year and a half — almost two years now,” Miller highlights. “I think the dynamic between me and Caeli is almost like a sister bond. We can literally talk for hours, but then we can also sit in silence for hours. It’s a very good relationship.”
Miller notes that the pair’s ability to communicate and their willingness to accommodate one another has been crucial to the success of their partnership.
“I always like to take a deep breath before I go. So, she’ll stand there and let me have my time to take a deep breath, and then we go,” Miller outlines. “For her, one of her harder dives is the back twister. That’s kind of a scary dive for her, so I really don’t wait too long on that dive, just because I know she doesn’t want to waste any time on the board thinking about it.”
You can read more about Miller’s journey to the Olympics in our full pre-Games profile on the Nepean-Ottawa Diving Club product by Adam Beauchemin here.
Also in action on Wednesday is Gaby Dabrowski, who has a pair of doubles matches scheduled in both the women’s and mixed competitions.
She’s won her opening matches in each event alongside Canadian partners Leylah Annie Fernandez and Felix Auger-Alliasime.
Fernandez and Dabrowski are set to face off against the neutral Olympic duo of Mirra Andreeva and Diana Shnaider in the women’s second round, while Auger-Aliassime and Dabrowski will take on Americans Coco Gauff and Taylor Fritz in the mixed quarter-finals.
Dabrowski had only won one match in her two previous Olympic appearances and will now look to continue her deepest run yet.
Jessica Gaudreault and the Canadian women’s water polo team fell 12-7 at the hands of a very strong Hungarian side on Monday. On Wednesday, they’ll face China in a match that would greatly enhance their prospects on advancing to the tournament quarter-final round.
“We definitely have to work on our communication and making sure that those little mishaps don’t happen,” Gaudreault told Sports Pages reporter Jackson Starr post-game. “We don’t want China to capitalize on it (like) Hungary did and I think being way more aggressive on offence, and I know, I know, we will be able to. Hungary and China are two very different teams defensively, so just take those opportunities as they come.”
Vanessa Gilles scored a goal heard around the country on Sunday afternoon, and then delivered a message that resonated even louder with a passionate post-game interview. Fans reacted across Canada to Gilles driving a rebound off the post and into the host France’s net in stoppage time in order to effectively keep Canada’s hopes of advancing through the group stage alive with a 2-1 win.
“We haven’t slept in the last three days. We haven’t eaten. We’ve been crying,” Gilles told the CBC. “I wouldn’t say they are ideal performing situations, but we’ve held each other through it and we’ve had absolutely nothing to lose.
“What’s given us energy is each other and our determination and our pride to prove people wrong, our pride to represent this country when all this sh** is coming out about our values, about our representation as Canadians. It’s not us. Like I’ve said time and time again, we’re not cheaters. We’re damn good players, we’re a damn good team, we’re a damn good group and we’ve proven that (Sunday).”
The resilient and gutsy Canadian side, persevering through staff suspensions and deducted points, find themselves on level ground, having recouped the six points lost to get back to zero heading into their final group stage match with Columbia on Wednesday.
There is still an appeal to come, which could change the number of points deducted if successful, but nonetheless Canada once again needs to find a result in order to have a chance to move on. Barring a highly unfriendly tiebreak scenario, Canada will advance to the elimination round with a victory over Colombia even if the six-point penalty remains intact.
Heading into his second game with South Sudan, Ottawa’s Marial Shayok will look to help his team while going up against the ever-dangerous United States men’s basketball team.
South Sudan, which claimed its independence from Sudan just 13 years ago, was able to secure its first victory of the tournament on Sunday in a 90-79 win over Puerto Rico, with Shayok collecting 15 points in the win.
“It’s unbelievable,” Shayok said in a Paris 2024 Olympics story. “It’s nothing like I’ve ever experienced. This is the Olympics, the biggest stage in the world. To see our fans here, to see our support, it was unbelievable.
“It’s an amazing feeling that we could represent our country in a positive light. It hasn’t always been a positive narrative coming out of our country. We’re a new country, a new team and just to paint this narrative, it’s been special to be a part of.”
Something that can give Shayok and South Sudan hope against the Americans is that in pre-tournament play, the South Sudanese came ever so close to pulling off an upset against the U.S. They lost by just one point, 101-100, after Lebron James saved the day late for the Americans. Shayok led the way in scoring with 25 points in the exhibition contest.
“It’s bittersweet because obviously no one thought we could even hang with these guys or it’d even be a game,” Shayok noted post-game. “[But] it was good to see that we got to play with the best team, some may say in the world.”
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