RIO DE JANEIRO—With 22 medals, including four gold, and heartwarming and heartbreaking performances off the podium, the Rio Olympics arguably have been Canada’s best Summer Games.

In the bigger picture, things worked out well for the Canadians. But break the medal count down a little, take a closer look, and it’s clear some sports delivered far more than expected while others posted some disappointing results.

“There’s definitely going to be a review across the board of all sports federations as to where they viewed their performance,” chef de mission Curt Harnett said Sunday, as the Rio Olympics came to a close. “That’s something that constantly happens, whether we see the great success or not.”

But in an era of high performance funding, where sports that deliver on the global stage are rewarded with bigger budgets while those that don’t find themselves struggling to maintain their programs, such reviews matter significantly.

Here’s a look at two sports that performed better than expected, and two that didn’t:

Thanks for that

Athletics

From winning Canada’s first men’s medal in Rio — Andre De Grasse’s bronze in the 100 metres — to the great final event, a 10th-place result by Eric Gillis in the men’s marathon, the athletics team exceeded expectation.

The team’s six medals are the most for Canada since the first Los Angeles Games in 1932. Derek Drouin won gold in high jump, De Grasse took silver in the 200, bronze in the 100 and, with his relay teammates, bronze in the 4x100 and multi-event athletes Brianne Theisen-Eaton and Damian Warner won bronze medals in the heptathlon and decathlon, respectively.

This was Canada’s largest and most successful team ever.

“The only word I have is outstanding,” said Athletics Canada head coach Peter Eriksson, in summing up the team’s performance.

The only question for Athletics Canada now, as Eriksson has already pointed out, is figuring out how to keep the success going for Tokyo 2020 and beyond.

Swimming

A Toronto teen made history in Rio by becoming the first Canadian to win four medals at a Summer Olympics and set the tone for success in the pool.

Penny Oleksiak, a 16-year-old from Toronto, won Canada’s first gold of the Games in the 100 freestyle to go along with silver in 100 butterfly and two bronze medals with her relay teammates.

Overall, with two backstroke bronze medals by Kylie Masse in the 100 and Hilary Caldwell in the 200, the swim team produced six medals — triple what it left London with.

But it is Oleksiak’s dominance across different swimming styles that is part of what Swimming Canada hopes is a move towards producing the kind of multi-event swimmers this country hasn’t had in decades.

Better luck next time

Rowing

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That the Rio Olympics would be a different regatta for Rowing Canada was certain before their boats even dropped into the windy lagoon here.

After the 2012 Games, the sport body disbanded its men’s eight boat, which had won silver in London, to pursue a small boats strategy. Essentially, they killed the men’s eight to spread limited talent across smaller boats hoping to trade one Olympic medal for two in Rio and even more at future Games.

But the plan didn’t come close to working here. The men finished with a grand total of zero medals; the four came sixth and the quad sculls eighth.

It wasn’t much better on the women’s side, where the eight boat, which only used to worry about the dominant U.S. team, finished a disappointing fifth.

The only medal for the team was the silver won by Lindsay Jennerich and Patricia Obee in the women’s lightweight double sculls. That’s not much to show for the $17 million Rowing Canada received from the Own the Podium in the Rio quadrennial, the most of any summer sport.

“It wasn’t good,” Peter Cookson, the sport’s high performance director said here. “There’s no hiding from that.”

Canoe/kayak

These Games were the first since the 1992 Barcelona Games that Canada didn’t win a single medal in any canoe or kayak event.

The national sport body received $10 million from Own the Podium, targeting athletes most likely to win a medal. It’s one of the higher amounts for a summer sport, and yet the top result here was the seventh-place finish by sprint kayaker Mark de Jonge, a world record holder and back-to-back world champion.

It’s a long way from London, when paddlers Adam van Koeverden, Mark Oldershaw and de Jonge delivered three medals.

Each of the three sought a different course to renewed Olympic success here, with van Koeverden training for a time in Australia and de Jonge, an engineer by trade, tinkering with the mechanics of his equipment. But none of it worked for these men, all in their 30s and battling ever-deeper international fields.

Canoe Kayak Canada, which began a high-performance review last fall, has said it will move ahead with numerous changes, including staffing, in the coming months.

Graphics by Cameron Tulk

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