Hong Kong – There is little left to be said about 40-year-old Eric Lamaze’s Olympic gold medal performance today, after the eyes of the sports world followed him through one of the greatest redemptions in sports history.
Competing in his first Olympics after being removed from the 1996 and 2000 teams for drug infractions, but later having the penalties overturned, Lamaze made Canadian Olympic history today. Partnered with his great stallion, Hickstead, he won the only individual gold medal in Olympic show jumping ever earned by a Canadian. It was only the second individual medal, of any colour, for Canada in this sport. And it was the first since 1976, when Montreal’s Michel Vaillancourt earned silver.
Lamaze’s golden moment was the icing on the cake for a record-setting week. He was also part of the silver medal winning show jumping team on Monday – the first medal for Canada in the show jumping team event in forty years.
“This is what I came here to do,” an emotional Lamaze stated simply. “This was my goal.” Before the Games, Lamaze said, “My goal is to do well to pay back all the people who stood by me and believed in me.” He often spoke of the “debt he owed Canadians” for his past mistakes. One Canadian journalist said today, “Now we have a debt towards him.” Lamaze’s gold medal is one of only three gold medals Canada has earned, to date, in these Games.
Today’s individual medal final saw the top-35 of the original 77 starters, following three qualifiers, in a two-round show-down. They all started equal with no qualifying scores carried forward. Only Lamaze and Rolf-Goran Bengston, of Sweden, on Ninja, were able to jump both rounds clear, creating a tie-breaker for the gold medal. In the tie-breaker, only Lamaze and his great stallion Hickstead was able to leave all the jumps standing.
Bengston settled for silver and the bronze went to Beezie Madden, of the U.S.
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