The Canadian men's gymnastics team may not be the world's deepest, but it proved it is deeper than the gold plating on Kyle Shewfelt's Olympic medal.
As Shewfelt watched from a wheelchair with two broken legs suffered in a training accident, Edmonton's Brandon O'Neill, Halifax's David Kikuchi and the rest of Shewfelt's Canadian teammates earned a spot in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
Their eighth-place finish at the world championships in Stuttgart, Germany, means that Shewfelt, the floor exercise winner at Athens in 2004, will have a chance to defend his title in Beijing.
"I don't think they were doing it for me, I think they were doing it for us," said Shewfelt, of Calgary, who wheeled around the stadium after his teammates from apparatus to apparatus.
"This core group of eight, it's really tight. It's our 'A' team. They were doing it for us as a team. And next year, regardless of who that team is, it's going to be a strong team."
Shewfelt, fortunately, will avoid the scalpel but he will be out of action for six to eight weeks while he recovers from small fractures to the tibia bones of both legs, suffered in an awkward landing on the floor in a practice last week, according to Gymnastics Canada president and chief executive officer, Jean-Paul Caron.
Not only was Shewfelt missing from the lineup, but so was veteran Adam Wong of Calgary who hadn't recovered fully from a torn Achilles tendon. He was with the team as an alternate. The likelihood of a top-12 finish plummeted quickly.
"It's going to be a lot tougher than we expected," says Caron said before yesterday's rounds.
The Canadians were in fifth place with 357.700 points after qualifying Tuesday and hung on to the Olympic berth as the last nine teams competed.
China, who will be Olympic host, put on a dominant show and its athletes were spectacular show on the rings. At 374.275 points, the Chinese were a whopping 3.550 points ahead of the closest thing they had to competition, Olympic champion Japan.
"When we had Kyle, we were pretty sure that we'd make the Olympics," O'Neill said. "Then, when we lost him, we knew we had to make sure we were on our games to make the Olympics.
"It's obviously a huge blow," O'Neill added. "He's our team leader, an Olympic champion and his floor, vault and high bar scores are huge."
Closing their day on high bar and floor, the Canadians looked confident. O'Neill's tumbling passes were solid, his landings sure. And when his score of 15.525 was posted — ninth best on the event so far — the Canadians started celebrating, with Shewfelt in their midst.
The qualifying story wasn't as bright for the Canadian women, who will miss the team event after placing 14th Sunday. Part of the shortfall was the fact that two of Canada's top gymnastic performers, Peng Peng Lee of Richmond Hill, Ont., and Charlotte Mackie of Coquitlam, B.C., aren't even eligible for Beijing because they are too young for the 16-year-old threshhold of Olympic gymnastics competitipon. Mackie is 13 and Lee 14. The United States dominated that event with 245.025 points, ahead of China's 241.175 points.
1
