BREAKING Another suspect arrested in Toronto Pearson airport gold heist: police
Another suspect is in custody in connection with the gold heist at Toronto Pearson International Airport last year, police say.
The defining moment of Annie Vernon’s rowing career is one forever captured on TV news footage – she and her three teammates standing at the rowing-canoeing park in Beijing, receiving their Olympic medals in 2008. But the footage shows clear anguish on the faces of Vernon and her Great Britain teammates; the medals were silver, their quadruple sculls boat having been passed by the Chinese in the race’s home stretch.
For Olympians who train with the dream of feeling the gold medal being placed around their neck as their national anthem plays, falling just short can feel like missing the opportunity of a lifetime.
Even now, the memories pack a punch for Vernon.
“I think I still feel 90 per cent the same emotions that I did in that moment, which was just huge frustration. I really felt like we'd let ourselves down. We would really focus on winning gold and I still think we were capable of doing it on that day,” Vernon told CTV’s Your Morning on Monday.
It’s a reality that can seem strange to an armchair fan, watching elite athletes compete at a global level for the highest honour in their sport. Surely, finishing second in the world should feel like an amazing achievement? It’s a nice thought, but one that runs into the reality that any competition that is about winning is also about losing. For instance, Vernon points out that the area where athletes are able to see family and friends immediately after a race is often referred to as the ‘kiss and cry’ area, with tears that are not always for joy.
Vernon, a two-time world champion, has examined the subject beyond just her own first-hand experience. In 2019, she looked at the psychology of elite athletes in her book “Mind Games.” She says that finishing a close second can often be more difficult for an athlete to process than missing the podium outright, or finishing well back of the leaders.
“I think it's because you're so close but you're so far. You know you can touch the podium but you're not standing on it. You're watching other people stand there they get their medals and have their moment,” says Vernon.
Now 13 years removed from her Olympic medal race, Vernon has had time to reflect on her performance and can recognize it for the monumental achievement it was. She says she tells athletes that it’s important to look beyond the podium.
“I think as an athlete you've got to look beyond the result, you've got to understand everything you've achieved, the highs and lows the friendship, the memories, the people you’ve met, the experience you’ve had,” she says. “Yeah, that the medal, the result is a huge part of that, but it's just still one part of that picture.”
That said, as someone wired for elite competition, the sting of losing can linger. Vernon had hoped to repeat on the Olympic podium at the 2012 games in London, this time with a gold. Instead, her eights crew finished fifth.
“Resilience comes from being tested, doesn’t it?” she says. “Obviously four years later I wasn't able to get that goal that I wanted, so I didn't have that that fairy tale ending that I would have loved. But again that's life isn't it? You grit your teeth you smile and you move on to your next challenge.”
Another suspect is in custody in connection with the gold heist at Toronto Pearson International Airport last year, police say.
A Conservative government led by Pierre Poilievre would not legislate on, nor use the notwithstanding clause, on abortion, his office says, as anti-abortion protesters gather on Parliament Hill.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
For some immigrants, their dreams of permanently settling in Canada have taken an unexpected twist.
A southwestern Ontario woman has received an $8,400 bill from a hospital in Windsor, Ont., after she refused to put her mother in a nursing home she hated -- and she says she has no intention of paying it.
Studies have shown that ultraprocessed foods can have a detrimental impact on health. But 30 years of research show they don’t all have the same impact.
Miss Teen USA resigned Wednesday, sending further shock waves through the pageant community just days after Miss USA said she would relinquish her crown.
A video circulating on social media of a young girl being hit by a bike has some calling for better safety and more caution when designing bike lanes in the city. The video shows a four-year-old girl crossing Jeanne-Mance Street in Montreal's Plateau neighbourhood to get on a school bus stopped on the opposite side of the street
Ontario Provincial Police say six people have suffered severe injuries in a single-vehicle crash in Sharbot Lake, Ont, including two in life-threatening condition.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum is inviting visitors to explore their poop. A new exhibition opens at the Ottawa museum on Friday called, 'Oh Crap! Rethinking human waste.'
The Regina Police Service says it is the first in Saskatchewan and possibly Canada to implement new technology in its detention facility that will offer real-time monitoring of detainees’ vital health metrics.
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.