Out of the blue

Beijing - Canada's dramatic second-half turnaround continued at the Beijing Olympics as another multi-medal performance by Canadian athletes helped the team eclipse its overall performance from four years ago in Athens.

Triathlete Simon Whitfield, trampoline gymnast Jason Burnett and diver Alexandre Despatie each won a silver medal on Tuesday, while hurdler Priscilla Lopes-Schliep added a bronze as Canada increased its medal count to 13 - one more than it won in Greece.

"I'm just very proud of the whole Canadian team," said Sylvie Bernier, the Canadian chef de mission in Beijing. "We knew we were doing well, we knew we were right on track. We've been saying that (the) whole first week.

"We knew the progression was there," added Bernier, who won a gold medal in three-metre diving at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. "We had faith and we were confident the morale was there, the enthusiasm was there and we were just waiting for these medals. We knew they were coming. Tonight it's great. I feel so great."

Canada sat tied with the Netherlands at 12th overall in the medal standings after Tuesday's competition with two gold, six silver and five bronze medals. All medals have come over the last four days.

And it looks like there will be more medals to come. Flag-bearer Adam van Koeverden tore through his qualifying heat of the K-1 500-metre kayak, breaking his own world record in the process.

Whitfield started the medal rush Tuesday with a silver in men's triathlon after winning gold in the event at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Unsatisfied with his 11th-place finish at the Athens Games four years ago, Whitfield dedicated himself to improving his performance in all three stages of the triathlon, particularly the swim.

It paid off for the Kingston, Ont., native when he finished in one hour 48 minutes 58 seconds - five seconds behind Germany's Jan Frodeno.

"To be able to fight my way back to the podium, that was hard, that was so hard - this was a harder race than Sydney was," said Whitfield.

Edmonton's Paul Tichelaar finished 28th, while Hamilton's Colin Jenkins was 50th.

Burnett followed with a silver in men's trampoline, nailing a routine that had the highest degree of difficulty in the competition. The 21-year-old finished second with 40.7 points.

"That rocked," he said. "That was awesome."

The three-time Canadian champion from Toronto was performing at his first Olympics. Lu Chunlong of China won the gold medal with 41 points, while countryman Dong Dong won bronze with 40.6.

Burnett's silver comes a day after Karen Cockburn won silver in women's trampoline.

"He did an amazing performance tonight," said Cockburn. "He set the bar so high we know it would be really difficult to beat. We're just so proud of him."

Despatie made it three silver medals on the day with a second-place finish in the men's three-metre springboard. He scored 536.65 to earn his second silver in the event in as many Games.

He Chong of China won gold with a dominating 572.90. World champion Qin Kai of China took bronze with 530.10.

Despatie said the silver medal was particularly special, capping a comeback from an injury-plagued year.

"My silver medal is gold to me because of all the bad things that happened to me this year," he said. "I was able to get it together."

Reuben Ross of Butte, Sask., finished 18th and did not advance.

Lopes-Schliep rounded out the medals with a bronze in the women's 100-metre hurdles, ending a long drought for the Canadian track team.

Canada hadn't won a medal in track since the 1996 Atlanta Games, when Donovan Bailey won the men's 100 metres then anchored the champion 4x100 relay team.

Lopes-Schliep, the 25-year-old from Whitby, Ont., raced to a time of 12.64 seconds Tuesday night in a packed 91,000-seat Bird's Nest stadium.

"I feel like I've jumped out of my body, went to heaven and back," Lopes-Schliep said. "This is a huge accomplishment, it went by so fast and here I am with a medal."

It's fitting that van Koeverden's blistering performance came on the same day as Whitfield's medal. The Oakville, Ont., kayaker draws much of his inspiration from Whitfield's gold-medal performance in Sydney.

"For the past eight years, he's probably been the most inspirational Canadian athlete I've gotten to know," van Koeverden said. "Today was just like icing on the cake. I didn't know what a triathlon was really in 1999 and then watching it in 2000 was eye-opening and probably the main force in changing my attitude towards the way I treated my training.

"Watching Simon win in 2000 was one of those moments that I just kind of realized that I want to be a Canadian athlete and I want to be an Olympic champion and I want to race at a world-class level."

Meanwhile, Brazilians hung their heads in shame in the wake of their Olympic football team's 3-0 drubbing from archrival Argentina on Tuesday.

The crowds gathered around TVs in bars and juice stands across Rio de Janeiro for the 10 a.m. kickoff deflated as Olympic champion Argentina piled on three goals in the second half of the semifinal and two Brazilian players were red-carded for violent fouls.

"Brazil always has dreamed of the gold, too bad we never seem to win it. We'll just have to wait another four years," Adilson Paixao Silveira, a 23-year-old office worker, said as he commiserated with friends at a street corner bar near Botafogo beach.

Meanwhile, local Argentina TV station Todo Noticias interrupted coverage of an important trial and flashed an "urgent" across the screen to announce Argentina's first victory over Brazil in three years.

The online headline for top-selling daily Clarin declared Argentina had "humiliated Brazil."

"Smoked 'em," screamed the headline across the online sports Web site Ole, which called the win "impeccable."

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