Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 5

C4 CALGARY HERALD Saturday, September 23, 2000 r- Diving Montminy, Heymans sit solidly in third, fourth heading into semis Chinese within Canucks' sights Ik it-. between dives that your stress can actually come down. I was just walking around outside to relax." Diving a lucky 13th, Montminy opened with an inward 2 piked somersault that won her marks of 7.5 and 8.0. Only one 6.5 soiled her scorecard all day, the rest of her marks mostly at the 7.5 and 8.0 level And she earned a 9.0, the only non-Chinese to do so on Friday, for a glittering back 2 piked somersault Competing 40th and last, using a more difficult list, Heymans was very good, if just a little less sharp. She was impressive on her last effort, a back 2', piked somersault with twists that isn't attempted by anyone else, including the Chinese.

"That dive is worth the risk," Heymans said. "I'm really comfortable with it because it's one of my most consistent dives. Not since Seoul in 1988 has Canada had a woman in an Olympic 10-metre final, and head coach Mitch Geller is delighted that this team stands to qualify two. "Today puts both Anne and Emilie in really good shape to make the final," Geller said. "Anne has if not the best then certainly among the best compulsory dives (the four to be performed in semi-finals), and Emilie is very, very solid in compulsories as well The Chinese hope, even expect, to sweep both women's platform and 3-metres here.

Sang Xue, 15, and Li Na, 16, both less than 95 pounds, have each won two World Cup events this year and showed world-beating form in preliminaries. "The Chinese are very, very good if they're at their best" said Geller. "But this is the Olympics, and it's a compe-titioa If they do all their dives the best they can, and I don't think they will, it's going to be difficult to beat them." No matter how sick she felt Montminy built a healthy foundation for this meet and both she and Heymans have accomplished something that's not often done: they have the Chinese tossing a glance over their shoulders. DAVESTUBBS Herald Olympic Bureau SYDNEY A funny feeling comes over Anne Montminy when she's about to dive well, and it's a feeling she doesn't enjoy one bit "It's very unpleasant to feel like you're going to vomit before every dive," Montminy said, laughing at her nerves, "but fortunately I perform well under those circumstances." There was nothing sickly about Montminy's effort in Friday's 10-metre diving preliminaries, or that of teammate Emilie Heymans. The two Canadians stand a solid third and fourth behind two Chinese after five dives as they head into Sunday's four-dive semi-final round (5:10 p.m.

today MDT). Only a monumental collapse will keep them from qualifying for the finals. Eighteen athletes from Friday's field of 40 advanced to the semi-finals, and only the top 12 in semis will dive for medals (2:10 a.m. Sunday MDT). The prelims work of Montminy and Heymans, of Montreal-suburban Pointe Claire and Greenfield Park, respectively, ranged from solid to outstanding.

Montminy has 339.93 points, 34.86 out of lead held by Sang Xue. China's Li Na is second with 366.66, with Heymans fourth at 333.78. Tm really pleased with how it finished. It wasn't stellar, but it was solid," said Montminy, 25, diving in her third Olympics. "It was very consistent.

I know basically that unless I crash in semis, I'll be in finals. "It will be nice to go in a little more relaxed than I was this morning. I felt really, really nervous, and I'm pleased that I broke that initial barrier." Heymans, an 18-year-old Olympic rookie, admitted to early nerves as well, but she too shook them off. "After the first three dives I was feeling better," she said. "In a field this large, you spend so much time waiting Canada's Anne Montminy of Pointe-Claire, Kevin Prayer, Canadian Press platform qualifications.

From CI Swim: Team 'doesn't give up' Prairie dog swims with the big dogs tucks during the 10-metre required to be faster than they've ever been in their lives just to survive the heats. You've explained why. But do you think it will satisfy a disappointed Canadian public? "It stands to reason if we'd reached the podium a lot more it would have defined much better what we've accomplished here but it's not happening to this point "One thing about this team, though. It doesn't give up. That's a really great characteristic.

You've got to fight the fight all the way through and I'm proud of them from the point of view that they've done that under this stress of Olympic-level competition and have come up with record perfor- De Bruijn wins again SYDNEY Inge de Bruijn of the Netherlands won the 50-metre freestyle today for her third individual Olympic gold. De Bruijn finished in 24.32 seconds 0.19 seconds slower than the world record she set in Friday's semi-finals. Therese Alshammar of Sweden took silver in 24.51 seconds, and American Dara Torres won bronze in 24.63. American Amy Van Dyken, the defending Olympic champion, was fourth in 25.04. 7-6 in the other to earn berths in Sunday's gold-medal match.

"We're happy we won the game, but overall it's safe to say we're disappointed with the final result" said water-polo team leader Francine Raymond. "We came here with legitimately high expectations. We had a realistic goal of playing for a medaL" But Canada, which had qualified for the Olympics at the 1999 FTNA Cup and won last summer's Pan American Games, ran afoul of politics and its own inability to capitalize on its opportunities. Questionable officiating by referees appointed by European-dominated FINA, the world governing body of aquatics, didnl help. "We had our problems with FTNA, and we paid a price for that" Raymond said.

"But we had our fate in our own hands, that's the reality of it and we haw to live with that Johanne Begin of Sainte-Foy, Que, led Canadian scorers with eight goals. Montreal's Ann Dow had six, while team captain Cora Campbell of Calgary had five. mances and personal best performances which is the first step toward where we need to be. "The best example I can give you is (Morgan) Knabe going out under world-record pace in the 200 and getting to that leveL He's not afraid of them. The younger generation of kids we have in this program is not afraid.

They just have to keep working at it "We need to understand it takes a lot of time now to groom somebody for the podium in swimming. It's not just show up, put on your suit and swim two lengths, right? It's much harder than that" Exactly how much harder. Coach? "We had three medals in Atlanta, seven national records and we reached finals. I'm not trying to rationalize our lack of podium performances this time. I'm just being realistic If you get to the podium here you've really got something.

"Take a great swimming nation like Germany. They have two bronze medals. It's supposed to be the No. 2 swimming nation in the world and it's struggling to get two medals. Here, the ball has flown into the Italian court, but it just means that a lot of nations have the information they need to produce top swimmers.

A lot more than we've ever seen before. And that's what we're up against" Laurent Rebours, Associated Press Canadian goalie Josee Marsolais calls out a play to teammates. 111 i "And I think there's support to raise it now. Six months ago, I told the Canadian Olympic Association, which sets the criteria, that a global shift in swimming was in place. I don't think they're against revising it." Is it possible that an oversized team was unwieldy, hence detrimental to expectations overall? "I don't think any of the front-runners suffered at all in this preparation because of the size of the team.

I'm not prepared to go there. It's pretty clear to me. "On the other hand, when you're going Into a competition like this where the'jiepth of field is pretty high, you want people who are feeling competent in the arena. Many of those teams who have come with smaller groups of kids and have been able to focus on that, have been in an advantageous positioa "fou look at teams like the Netherlands and Costa Rica; and Italy has a bigger team, not a huge team, but they've focused on the high end, they've dealt with their preparations in that manner, and I think there's some merit in that Within our sports system we have this top-16 or top-half qualification format based on what happened four years ago. I think something like top-12 would be a reasonable bar, or a reasonable starting point to look at, after this." In many cases, your swimmers were Playing for pride, water polo team avoids last place DAVESTUBBS Herald Olympic Bureau SYDNEY In the end it came down to playing for nothing but pride, and Canada was not prepared to finish last Jana Salat of Calgary scored a power-play goal with one minute remaining in the first extra period Friday night to lift Canada to a 9-8 victory over Kazakhstan, giving the Canadians a fifth-place finish in the first-ever Olympic women's water polo tournament The teams were tied 4-4 at half-time, and Canada needed a two-goal fourth quarter to force the two, three-minute overtime periods.

The United States defeated the Netherlands 6-5 in one semi-final and the host Australians beat Russia ming, don't think of swimming, don't think of But when I arrived at the pool I wasn't nervous. I just put my head down the last 10 metres and reached for it. You know when you're going fast you know when you're going slow, too. But Fve had a smile on my face ever since I touched that walL "I did it when I wanted to do it. That's all I can take away from this." Winnipeg's 17-year-old Kelly Ste-fanyshyn turned in a relatively slow time in the women's 200-metre backstroke final finishing dead last in 204.57, six-and-one-half seconds off the pace and 1.2 seconds off the race that qualified her for the final "I was pretty tired coming off two races yesterday," she said.

"Everything was burning coming home in the last 50. Fm not used to swimming three times like we're doing here." She said her goal was to qualify and take whatever bonus was available thereafter. "I decided Fd just go for it right at the start I had nothing to lose, knowing the loo-metre gold medallist was in one of the centre lanes. But it took a lot out of me. "Seven days of swimming at this level has exhausted a lot of us." Romania's Diana Mocanu swept the Olympic backstroke gold, winning the 200 in 2:08.16 by a margin of more than two seconds and 1.5 seconds off the world record set by Krisztina Egerszegj in 1991.

Roxana Maracineanu of France won silver and Miki Nakao of Japan took bronze. A pair of Americans upset the form chart in the men's 50-metre freestyle Anthony Ervin and Gary Hall finished in a dead heat at 21.98, missing Alexander Popov's Olympic record by 7iooths. Hollander Pieter van den Hoogenband took the bronze, 5iooths back. It was his fourth medal of the Games. Popov, the Olympic champion in 1992 and 1996, was sixth.

Defending Olympic champion Brooke Bennett of the US. repeated in the women's marathon swim at 800 metres. Bennett took out double individual medley gold-medal winner Yana Klochkova of the Ukraine by more than two seconds. Bronze winner Kaitlin Sandeno of the US. was another 1.5 seconds behind.

Dutch superstar Inge deBruijn rearranged yet another of her world records in the 50-metre free semi-finals, paring the standard from 24.39 to LARRY WOOD Herald Olympic Bureau e's big. He's talL He's strong. He's mature. And perhaps he was Canada's best last hope for a swimming medaL Mike Mintenko swam like a medal hope Friday night at the Olympic Games superpool but his best-ever swim left him two places shy of the podium in the 100-metre butterfly fi-naL "It was my best swim in my biggest race," the 24-year-old Moose Jaw native said afterward. "Three-tenths under the Canadian record.

I cant complain." Twenty-six-year-old Lars Frlander of Sweden drained the Aussie power in the race to claim the gold medal in an upset that missed the Olympic record record by 4100 ths of a second. Frlander (52-flat) beat the Australian favourites Michael Klim (5218) and Geoff Huegill (52.22) to the wall while Ian Crocker (5244) of the LIS. missed the medals by 22iooths and Mintenko (52.58) by 36iooths. "I knew I had to go my best to be with the best in the world and I guess Tm one of them now," said the 6-3, 210-pounder, who sliced 4A0U1S off his semi-final qualifier. "The small-town Prairie dog can make it with the big dogs.

It was exciting. But it also was like racing anybody else. I may not have been with the Canadian team long but I've been around the block. On the other hand, I was beaten by an 18-year-old (Crocker) so he handled it too." Mintenko broke fifth at the tone but was in fourth place after 50 metres. Crocker overhauled him in the Last 50, moving from seventh to fourth.

Frlander was third at the turn but out-swam the Aussies in the 50-metre stretch. "I couldn't sleep Last night" Mintenko admitted. 1 just lay there telling myself, 'doat think of swim.