Bedard thrilled with Games experience

Ray Bedard not only walked the straight and narrow, he ran and jumped it, too—which is more than he could say for some of his fellow competitors.
The 44-year-old Fort Frances resident returned last week from the Special Olympics World Summer Games in Dublin, Ireland with a pair of medals around his neck and a bushel of good memories to look back on.
His only regret is that other athletes in his three events—the long jump, the 200-metre dash and the 4×100-metre relay—decided to put winning ahead of integrity.
“There was supposed to be a five-millimetre length restriction on the cleats you wore,” said Bedard, who captured silver in the long jump and bronze in the 200 m dash, while finishing eighth running the lead leg for the relay team.
“But after the officials did their inspections the first couple of days, I know I was seeing some of the athletes showing up with longer cleats than they should have in the following days to have a better advantage.”
Shenanigans aside, Bedard was significantly impressed by the talent level of the international field at the Games, which saw approximately 7,000 athletes from 160 countries competing in 18 different events.
“It was right at the top where I figured it would be,” said Bedard, who was one of 16 track and field athletes to make Team Canada’s 58-person roster. “The speed that some of them had was just phenomenal. In the 10,000 m race, they had it in one gear for 25 laps, and then just kicked it up two more gears somehow on the last lap.”
Bedard wasn’t bothered by jet lag or time zone factors, practising the day after he arrived on the Emerald Isle.
But there was no real way to prepare for the moment he marched into the main stadium for the opening ceremonies with the Canadian contingent in front of an enthusiastic throng of more than 88,000 people.
“A security guard told me the ceremonies had been sold out a month in advance, and guys were offering 200 Euros apiece for tickets,” marvelled Bedard. “It was so special to actually be there.”
The long jump event saw Bedard go toe-to-toe with Brazil’s Claudio Garcia, as both men nailed jumps of 4.45 m on their second of three attempts to find themselves tied for the lead.
Bedard, who had already hit a personal best of 4.15 m on his first jump, finished with a 4.24 m effort on his last try. Garcia, a full 13 years younger than Bedard, then came through in the clutch with a leap of 4.54 m to snatch the gold out of Bedard’s grasp.
“I wasn’t disappointed with the last jump,” said Bedard, who didn’t object to sporting the shine of silver. “I had already gone a foot further than I did when I qualified at the nationals last year.”
Kaled Jarrar of Jordan landed the bronze medal with a final round jump of 4.17 m, while Saudi Arabia’s Ahmed Mousa landed an enormous jump of 4.97 m to easily post the best mark in Bedard’s division. Too easily, it turned out.
“There’s a rule that you have to be within 15 percent of your nationals’ qualifying mark with your preliminary round jump at the Games,” explained Bedard. “If you are, then you’re allowed to go another 15 percent maximum over your preliminary mark.
“But if you go over that 15 percent, then you’re automatically disqualified. That’s what happened to (Mousa). He only had a 4.3 or something like that in the preliminary.”
Bedard went on to add the regulation is in place to try and avoid athletes intentionally not trying to go very far, or very fast in the case of track events, so that they can compete in a less difficult division to improve their medal chances.
In the 200 m event, Bedard placed fourth in his six-man preliminary group with a time of 30.78 seconds. Placed in a four-man division for a shot at the podium, he was assured a medal when Mathieu Victor of the Seychelles did not register for the final soon enough before the start of the race and was disqualified.
Bedard put up another personal best in the final with a time of 30.15, finishing behind Poland’s Pawel Moszczynski (25.66) and Australia’s Christopher Kassulke (26.13).
“I was just trying to stay close with them,” said Bedard. “I was very happy, even though I was trying to match or beat my personal best from 1999 (29.90).”
The relay event saw Bedard and Canada 2 teammates Steve Gauthier, Kalim Keays and Jean-Francois Leclerc win their preliminary heat in 53.33, close to four seconds faster than their Games qualifying time.
But a baton drop on their last exchange in the final cost the squad, as they finished eighth with a time of 57.28, behind gold medalists South Africa 1 (49.61), silver winners Kenya 2 (50.99) and bronze finishers Ecuador 2 (51.25).
Outside of the competition arena, Bedard greatly enjoyed the time spent bonding with his Canadian teammates and meeting a host of athletes from other countries such as Germany, Brazil and China.
“We rode on the bus with two other teams of athletes to the venues each day,” recalled Bedard. “That really kept a good spirit among all the countries.”
The next Games are scheduled for Shanghai, China in 2007, and even though he’ll be pushing 50, Bedard isn’t backing down from the challenge of a return engagement.
“My times and my distances won’t be as good by then, but I’m going to give it a run,” he vowed.