Today the CBC Sports headline read, “Eric Lamaze takes home gold in Olympic individual show jumping.”  I watched the event on NBCOlympics.com, as the story of an athlete’s comeback from drug problems raced to its heart-stopping conclusion.  Lamaze and his horse Hickstead were locked in a timed jump-off with Sweden’s Rolf-Goran Bengtsson and Ninja. The course was shortened, with tight turns and trappy combinations. The Swede and his horse ended the speed run with 4 faults. But Lamaze and Hickstead were having one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments — clearing the fences with air to spare, taking the last one at a risky angle to shave off a micro-second of time.  Afterwards Lamaze and his panting horse were the center of a backstage frenzy of applause and congratulations.

An Outsports reader from Canada asked if we were ever going to mention his country. As of today, the Maple Leaf Nation has yet to win a medal. Even Togo has won a medal. But Canada came up big-time on the Oxygen broadcast of show jumping today.This was the qualifying round, where horses and riders have to show the organizers that they know what a grand-prix jump course is about. So many new countries are entering equestrian sport that everybody wants to make sure they’re experienced enough to compete.  The 550-meter course was beautiful - very Chinese, with jumps that incorporate a fan shape or moon bridge, and two dragons flanking one vertical - all of them just tricky enough to make a horse pay attention.

I had not realized this little gem of a factoid until I got an e-mail from a Canadian reader:

“Great job on all the Olympic coverage, as always! I notice you guys don’t have anything on Canada - you know a country of 33 million people that has yet to win a medal, yet Olympic superpowers such as Togo, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have won medals. I’m kidding - we don’t deserve coverage yet.”