4th place finishers Olympics: Canada

Well, the Olympics are done. The pomp and circumstance was justifiably muted. I was worried about what could happen, but it all seemed to go well. Of course we laud the medal winners, but it all seems so expensive, environmentally unfriendly, and the corruption merciless. 

Currently, all the medal winners are appearing in various TV shows or radio, for interviews. 

🚲Our men's cyclist, Hugo Barrette, was in a cycling keirin race and thought to medal. In the heats, two cyclists behind him fell, and they redid the heat. This time he fell, being rather tired, and was eliminated. 

I've noticed 4th place finishers abound from Canada, I don't know about your country. These statistics are pretty much buried. I wonder about the top ten, as well. I read that it was arbitrary that there are medals for the top three – since 1904. 

"We all swam the best we could so that's all you can really ask for. You can't be disappointed with a Canadian record." – Penny Oleksiak (Canadian swimmer, 7 medals) 

Going all the way back in Olympic history, medals weren't given out in ancient Greece; the winners received an olive wreath. At the first two modern Olympic Games, in 1896 and 1900, first-place winners received a silver medal, a diploma and an olive branch. Second-place finishers got a bronze medal. Nada for third.

• 🏃Fourth-place finish 4x400m track relay, Canadian women were 60/100ths of a second behind bronze medallist Jamaica and 63/100ths shy of matching the national record.
• 🏃Melissa Bishop came 4th in the 800m but broke her national record by 0.41 seconds.
• 🏃Mo Ahmed was 4th in the 5000m, after a disqualification.
• 🚲Canada falls to the United States 4th in the women's team pursuit (cycling) bronze medal race at Tokyo 2020.
• Canada's Ellie Black falls just shy of podium with 4th-place finish in women's balance beam. First place was 14.6333, while Black earned 13.866. So close. She sprained her ankle a month ago. She lost to Simone Biles, so not a surprise.
• 🚴Canadian Rosie MacLennan's Olympic reign ends with 4th ... despite an injured ankle.
• Judoka Shady El-Nahas, who lost 1-0 in one of two men’s judo 100-kg bronze-medal matches, his fifth match of the day;
• 🚣Conlin McCabe and Kai Langerfeld in men’s rowing pairs, finishing fourth in the final and missing out on a bronze by only 0.55 seconds.
• 🏊Swimmers: McIntosh, Smith, Sanchez and Oleksiak, set a new Canadian record in the women’s 4×200 freestyle relay — in seven minutes, 43.77 seconds — but finished behind three teams (China, U.S., Australia) that all broke the pre-existing world-record time.
• 🏊McIntosh, the 14-year-old swimming up-and-comer from Toronto, in the women’s 400-metre freestyle.
• 🏊The men’s swimming, 4×100 freestyle relay, missing out on bronze by 6/10ths of a second.

The times are so close in the top 8 or 10. 

Not bad for a large country, with relatively few people.