'A beautiful soul': Funeral held for baby boy killed in wrong-way crash on Highway 401
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
-- Jennifer Abel did everything she could to ensure the Tokyo Olympics were not a repeat of Rio.
The 29-year-old from Laval, Que., spent a lot of time over the past five years going over her two fourth-place finishes at those 2016 Summer Games.
Sunday's Olympic silver medal in the women's three-metre synchronized springboard, alongside teammate Melissa Citrini-Beaulieu, was like a weight off her shoulders.
"Actually, I think I may have added a weight, because this thing is really heavy," said a laughing Abel, holding up her silver medal moments after the medal ceremony.
"Today we accomplished everything we wanted. We thought about the present moment, not the future or the past. We lived the moment together. I find it beautiful what we have achieved together."
Added Citrini-Beaulieu: "It's been a dream since I was young. I kept believing I could do it and now I'm by Jenn's side and we won a silver medal at the Olympics. I am proud of what we achieved."
Abel had saidthat she had experienced a certain "identity crisis" after Rio. Because she set the bar so high for herself, she says she left Brazil with a sense of failure. And while she's since made peace with that moment in her life, the pressure was still high Sunday.
"In Rio, my biggest mistake was focusing on the medal," said Abel. "But it was not easy to come here and not think about the medal. Especially since Melissa and I have finished second at all the world championships and World Cups since 2017."
The Canadians started the competition with some difficulty, sitting sixth out of eight teams after two dives. But they quickly climbed the leaderboard by executing higher-difficulty dives.
"We both knew that our first two dives weren't necessarily the best," said Abel. "We knew we had to get more points from our last three.
"At the same time, in synchronized springboard, things become very important as of the third dive. That's when anything can happen. We didn't get sidetracked with the little mistakes we made at the start because we knew we still had a lot left."
Abel and Citrini-Beaulieu, from of Saint-Constant, Que., finished the competition with a total score of 300.78.
The Chinese pair of Shi Tingmao and Wang Han finished first with 326.4 points -- a fifth straight Olympic title for China in the event. Germany's Lena Hentschel and Tina Punzel were third with 284.97 points.
"Before our last dive, I knew we were in a good position for a podium finish," said Abel. "When I entered the water, I knew I had had a good dive. My first reaction then was to look at Melissa and she looked at me with big eyes and she said, 'I got it'. I turned around and watched the reaction of the coaches and immediately knew that we had won the silver medal."
On the podium, an emotional Abel wiped away a few tears.
"It's not easy to come here," she said. "Everyone talking about the potential of getting the medal. I'm already putting enough pressure on myself and I'm putting some on Melissa too.
"I was really emotional because I couldn't have had a better partner than Melissa, a person who supports me. I am not always easy to manage. I am very picky. Melissa has always been there for me. It was just doing this together that made me really emotional."
For Abel, this is a second Olympic medal. She won bronze with Emilie Heymans in London in 2012.
"In 2012, I was young," said Abel. "With Emilie, she was the one with all the experience and the opportunity to do something huge for her career and for the Canadian team.
"I was in the position where I didn't want to be the one preventing her from having that title. Here, I wanted to do it for Melissa, it was for our team. We are two very demanding girls, we work hard, we are always ready to do more to reach our goals and that is what we did today."
Abel will try to apply the same recipe next Sunday in the individual three-metre springboard final.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 25, 2021.
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
There has been a "sophisticated" cybersecurity breach detected on B.C. government networks, Premier David Eby confirmed Wednesday evening.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
Rookie goalie Arturs Silovs will start in net for the Canucks as Vancouver kicks off a second-round series against the Edmonton Oilers Wednesday night.
One of the Indian nationals accused of murdering British Columbia Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar says in a social media video that he received a Canadian study permit with the help of an Indian immigration consultancy.
Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits about cancer risks related to the now discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is defending his comments about a new history museum after he was accused by a prominent First Nations group of trying to erase their history.
Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.