RIO DE JANEIRO -- Known for his analytical approach to kayaking, Canadian Mark de Jonge admitted it may have been his downfall at the Rio Olympics.
The two-time world champion from Halifax is going home disappointed after a seventh-place finish in the 200-metre men's singles event Saturday.
A civil engineer by trade, de Jonge says on his personal website that he is the "most informed athlete in my sport on the physics of paddling." But he suggested that he had done too much thinking and not enough paddling in Rio, where he was a good bet to improve on his bronze from the 2012 London Games.
"Maybe overanalyzing and really breaking things down stroke by stroke and I think that when you do you take away some of the emotion of just going out and crushing it," said de Jonge. "That's what I wanted to do today, I just got to the line saying 'You're just going to floor it the whole way, stop thinking, your body knows what to do.' I did that and I'm actually pretty happy with my performance today.
"The result? Seventh place is not good for me so I'm going to have to come to terms with that over the next few days but I'm pretty happy with what I did on the water, at least."
He crossed the finish line in 36.080 seconds. Liam Heath of Britain won gold in 35.197 while Maxime Beaumont of France was second in 35.362 and Spain's Saul Craviotto and Germany's Ronald Rauhe shared bronze at 35.662.
De Jonge pointed out that aside from Italy's Manfredi Rizza, he has beaten everyone in the deep field in the past.
"I'm pretty disappointed. Seventh isn't really where I'd seen myself coming into this thing. But realistically it's not far off," said de Jonge. "I didn't really have the best World Cup season in Europe in May and June. I was really hoping that was just kind of a random thing that was happening where I wasn't firing on all cylinders but it appears that that was a season-long thing. I just didn't have it today, unfortunately."
Canada has struggled at Rio's picturesque Logoa Stadium.
The rowing team came away with just one silver medal last week while the canoe/kayak squad failed to reach the podium. The rowers and paddlers combined for five medals four years ago in London. Mark Oldershaw of Burlington, Ont., and Adam van Koeverden of Oakville, Ont., were expected to contend for medals along with de Jonge in canoeing and kayaking but they too came up short.
Scott Logan, CanoeKayak Canada's high performance director, said that after the paddlers' disappointing performance at the Rio Games the organization would re-examine its elite programs.
"I guess everything's on the table, including myself," said Logan after de Jonge's race. "We're all accountable, I think that's the No. 1 principle that I hold my coaches up to and I'm held up to by my CEO. But it's being accountable to the right things (...) Is that being accountable to X number of medals versus the right processes that typically produce medals?
"I think that we're pretty good in terms of process and we're getting better. And if we don't continue to get better in how we deliver our sport then shame on me and shame on my coaches and we should be held accountable to that."
De Jonge squeaked into the final by just three one thousandths of a second on Friday. A photo finish was needed to determine if he had nabbed the fourth and final qualifying spot in his semifinal.
After failed attempts to qualify for the Olympics in 2004 and 2008 at longer distances, de Jonge worked full-time for three years with an engineering firm before taking a leave of absence to focus on making the 2012 Games when the 200 metres was added.
De Jonge acknowledged that his and his teammates' failure to win a medal may cost them funding for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
"You have to recognize that if we're not getting the medals we're not going to have the same level of support, so that's unfortunate," said De Jonge. "We're still a pretty good team, but we'll see what happens."
Logan, however, was more optimistic, pointing out that Canadian funding programs like Own The Podium look at long-term trends. That perspective, in his view, can't be undone by a poor performance at a single Games.
"We've won medals, essentially, since Barcelona (in 1992). Barcelona was the last time we didn't win a medal and not in '88, but you go before that we won lots of medals in '84 and '76 and you go right back to 1936 and canoeing has always been a medal-producing sport," said Logan. "So you have ups and you have downs.
"Right now we have an older team that has served incredibly well, they've raced with distinction and brought lots of honour to the country but many of them will now retire and its up to us to bring the next wave of youth up and I think OTP's acutely aware of that youth movement."
In the women's K4 500-metre event, Montreal's Emilie Fournel, Andreanne Langlois of Quebec City, Genevieve Orton of Lake Echo, N.S., and K.C. Fraser of Oakville, Ont., were eighth.
Hungary took the gold in 1:14.193.
