LONDON—Paula Findlay is sobbing and throbbing.

Three hundred metres to the finish line, her body is wracked with pain, her brain wracked with anguish.

She looks up towards the stands alongside the Serpentine pond in Hyde Park, knows her parents are there, and that hurts. She thinks of friends back home in Edmonton who stayed awake till 2 a.m. to watch this triathlon event live, how disappointed they must be.

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She’s so, so sorry.

“I wish I could have made them more proud. I just want to apologize. I feel terrible. I’m really sorry to everybody, to Canada. I had big hopes for myself and everyone had big hopes for me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t fulfill them.”

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This is what crushed dreams look like, limbs streaked with mud, flesh splotchy from strain, eyes pooling with tears and face tucked into the crook of an elbow, as if to hide.

There’s nothing to apologize for, really. Sports should never be this emotionally and mentally withering, the entire essence of a person wrapped up in the catastrophic result of one race.

Findlay finished last in the women’s triathlon, 52nd in the field, only the Did Not Finish beneath her on the scoreboard — which, alas, included her hard-luck Canadian teammate Kathy Tremblay, who crashed out on the bike segment and was then lapped in the 10k run, automatically relegating the native of St. Foy, Que., to the X-Files.

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Only a year ago, Findlay was a streaking supernova in triathlon, heralded as the hottest thing on wheels — and water and sneakers — in one of the most ultra-demanding sports disciplines, the stuff of champions. As a sudden phenomenon, she’d won five of her first six races in the world championship series and had soared to No. 2 ranking globally. Her slim dimensions, all sinew and muscle, cast a freakishly huge shadow across the triathlon stage, a sport of multi-tasking endurance that has quickly seized the public’s imagination since entering the Olympic pantheon in 2000.

But then came a perplexing hip injury that was long in the diagnosing and the decision — perhaps wrong — to forgo surgery with the Games approaching, Findlay putting her faith in physiotherapy and medication.

Maybe this is what Olympic gold and silver medallist Simon Whitfield was referring to after the race Saturday morning, when he spoke elliptically about the people who had “failed” Findlay in the past 12 months. “There’s a handful of people who should stay up and say, that’s on me. They were very quick to celebrate her wins a year ago, greatest ever, a one-in-a-million athlete. But when the going got tough, they jumped ship on her.

“She paid the piper today for the last year of some poor decisions on her part. But, at 23, the pressure that she was under, the people around her should have done a better job.”

Whitfield, who competes on Tuesday, would not further explain his provocative remarks. “I’ll save it till after.”

This triathlon was played out against the beautiful backdrop of Hyde Park in central London, the Serpentine replacing more traditional open water, the bicycle and marathon course looping around the edge of Buckingham Palace. The event consists of: 1500-metre swim off a plunging start, 43-kilometre bike run, 10k run.

Findlay was dead in the water, staggering ashore a distant 51st.

“That’s happened in a lot of races when you look up and see a lot of people in front of you and you think you’re in last but, you know, everyone’s close together and you can get a draft to catch up on the bike. So I didn’t lose hope. I knew that I wasn’t out of the game at that point.

“Usually we have two laps and that was just one big giant huge lap. I felt like it was going on forever.”

She’d not done an Olympic distance triathlon in a year; has only been back running for two months. The hip was “100 per cent” fine, yet the training preparation just wasn’t there.

Her legs felt like lead.

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Although pulling up to 43rd on the third bike lap, Findlay then began to fade. This was her first crisis, when she started to think the unthinkable — stopping. “I was so tempted to pull out. I had nothing in my legs. I don’t know why. I’ve had some really good training and I thought I could do something cool today. But I had nothing.’’

She persevered. But on the first lap of the run, the yearning to halt nearly overcame her and she did stop, momentarily. “I turned to the team doctor and said, ‘I can’t finish this.’ I was wobbling all over the course. I felt really dizzy. My legs, I couldn’t move them. They weren’t working. They’re stupid legs.”

The doctor advised: “You’ll be more satisfied if you finish.”

So Findlay dug down, in this most unfamiliar of situations, back-end trailing, and gutted it out. That deserves, if obviously not a medal, then at least an accolade.

“Obviously, finishing 15 minutes behind is not what I wanted. I’ve never experienced anything like that before. But I suppose I’m a little more satisfied that I finished than if I would have pulled out.”

Actually, Findlay brought up the rear 12.21 behind gold medallist Nicola Spirig of Switzerland at 1:59.48. After two hours of competition, the triathlon came down to a spectacular photo-finish, Spirig just lunging past Sweden’s Lisa Norden, also clocked at 1:59.48, but +0.01. After all she’d given, Norden was able to joke about that extraordinarily close result. “I hoped maybe I just got my chest out there. Guess I need bigger boobs for next year.”

Australia’s Erin Densham claimed bronze, with highly touted Helen Jenkins of Great Britain shut out of the medals in fifth.

When it was over, Findlay tweeted: “Sadder than I’ve ever been. Thanks for the love. Life goes on.”

Facing her own crucible, it should always be remembered and appreciated that Findlay didn’t cave to the siren song of sweet surrender. “I hate quitting. I’m very, very disappointed but at least I crossed the finish line. I guess.”

Tremblay couldn’t even get that far, suffering a horrible crash on a problematic bike — punctured rear tire replaced just before the race started, then possibly pumped up too high — and then lapped in the run. She too persevered, until the decision was made for her.

“The Olympics, you can’t abandon . . . I was slipping everywhere in the corners, my bike was shifting. I had to be careful but at that corner, oh God, it was very slippery.”

A treacherous wet corner, at the Buckingham Palace turnabout — Whitfield described it as “like a skating rink” — where many riders went down.

“Even if you crash,” said Tremblay, “you just get back on your bike and just f---ing go for it. It’s the Olympics!” At the end, she was down to just one gear. “I was stopped because I was lapped. I just want to say, it’s not me who quit the race.”

Findlay, desolate, didn’t quit either. And she learned something for next time.