July 21, 1996
First-day flops put old pal in spotlight
By TERRY JONES --
ATLANTA - So Joanne Malar damn near drowned in the Olympic pool?
Four seconds off her personal best?
Didn't even make the final?
Not one Canadian made the first- night finals?
Suddenly Curtis Myden and today's batch of celibate swimmers don't look like world-beaters?
And so fencer Jean-Marc Chouinard, ranked in the top 10, was rank. He was our other medal chance on the first day of action here yesterday. With a bye in the first round, he dumped in his diapers in his first event, inspiring one press row comic to suggest that he came to watch Jean Marc Chouinard, not Josee Chouinard.
You get the picture.
It's time to get Quick Draw Nick Gill warmed up, to go to the bullpen and bring back the First Medal Man from four years ago for an encore.
Four years ago in Barcelona, Gill caught us by surprise. Not this year. We'll be looking for him.
"The only difference between now and four years ago is that journalists know me now and expect a good result,'' said Gill.
"But that's OK. I don't mind. I expect even more for me.''
Familiar start
Gill suggests what might be happening here, with Canada now looking likely to get off to the same slow start as we did in Barcelona when Gill won bronze in judo to finally pull us ahead of Aruba, Botswana, Zaire and Zimbabwe and move us into a 24th place tie with Mongolia and Surinam with his win.
Gill says he puts more pressure on himself than his nation can possibly put on him to win.
"As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be the best in the world in what I do. This is what I do. I still want to be the best in the world at it.
"I want to be like Gaetan Boucher in Sarajevo in 1994. That was one of the first great Olympic performances which inspired me. I'd like to give a performance that would inspire somebody.''
Canada wasn't exactly dialled into Nicholas Gill four years ago. The media had never heard of him and wasn't paying any attention at all.
It was 10:36 p.m. in Barcelona when it happened. At 11:13 p.m. the word reached the media centre. Every single Canadian scribe dropped everything to run to judo where Gill was still in drug testing. Well, every scribe except Jay The American.
Jay Greenberg of the New York Post was a Toronto Sun columnist at the time and just couldn't figure out why anybody would want to interview a judo guy about a bronze medal after midnight.
Two vans were arranged and raced to the scene.
Mine won. The other one had a few problems.
"They had to scramble around to find someone to drive it, and when they finally did, it turned out to be a young woman who, alas, didn't have a clue where she was going,'' said Toronto Sun teammate Christie Blatchford.
"Then the van ran out of gas."
What a night.
Every Canadian scribe was there waiting for Gill to emerge from doping control.
We talked to his parents.
"We were not expecting third place,'' said daddy Denis.
"We were hoping for seventh place,'' said mommy Louise.
The first words out of Gill's mouth that night were to say not how thrilled he was that he'd won Canada's first medal but how sad it was that none of the other Canadians had realized their dreams before he took his turn.
So here we are four years later ...
"Being the first or last medalist is not very important to me. I have my own goals and I just hope the best for the rest of the Canadian team,'' he says as he contemplates his event tomorrow.
Draw looks good
Four years ago he upset the world champion, Hirotka Okada of Japan.''
They haven't thrown anybody like that against him early this time around.
"My draw is looking good,'' he said.
"I have the guy from Guatemala in the first round, the Congo in the second and Leon Villar from Spain in the third. After that it is hard to predict what will happen. A draw is only good after a good performance.''
One thing isn't hard to predict, says Gill.
When he goes home, his world will remain the same, regardless.
"When I went home from Barcelona, things went back to usual,'' said The First Medal Man from '94.
Can he do it again?
