RIO DE JANEIRO—It’s one of the great spectacles of an Olympics. But when the high-revving human horsepower of the men’s eight blasts into Lagoa Stadium on Saturday to cap Rio 2016’s rowing regatta, a Canada-badged boat won’t be among them.

You’ve probably heard about how, in a strategic decision in the lead-up to the Olympics, Rowing Canada effectively divided its men’s eight into two boats — a straight four and a quadruple sculls. The idea was to double the medal chances with the same number of athletes. The result, in the end, was nothing less than a debacle.

Four years after the eight added a silver medal to a collection of three golds won in the past eight Olympics, the new-fangled small-boats focus saw the men’s division of Rowing Canada’s fleet deliver precisely nothing.

Not a gold. Not a medal. Not even a good-guy, tried-hard run for fourth.

On Friday the four — featuring two members of the London eight, Conlin McCabe and Will Crothers — finished dead last in the gold-medal final in a performance McCabe likened to a runner who “slipped on the racetrack.” By that point the quad was a distant memory; those gentlemen finished second in their ultimate race, unable to dominate even the not-quite-world-class minnows of the B final.

“(The small-boats strategy) definitely didn’t pan out at these Games,” said McCabe. “You can look at it right away and go on first take: ‘This didn’t work.’ ”

McCabe, from Brockville, Ont., was the only member of the four made available to the media Firday. So on a day when high performance director Peter Cookson also avoided answering questions form reporters, it was McCabe left to explain the flaws of a program that received about $17 million in Own the Podium funding during the Rio quadrennial, more than any other sport.

Canada’s rowers will need an unlikely medal performance Saturday from the women’s eight to leave South America with more than a single silver medal. That medal was won Friday by Patricia Obee and Lindsay Jennerich, and it probably didn’t help the program’s credibility that the duo spoke this week about how they’d gone through “downs” on account of “stuff in our organization,” and about how they only found success after they hermitted themselves away from Rowing Canada’s larger machinery and kept their circle small.

In some ways, it was fitting McCabe found himself in the media glare. One of the unceasing truths of Olympic sport is that athletes always bear the burden of the bureaucracy’s brainstorms.

“We’ve prided ourselves on being program grinders. It’s the kind of guys we are. Every single day we show up, whatever’s on the program, we do it,” said McCabe. “We didn’t to have that success today, but I think it’ll pan out in the long term for us.”

Similar notes of hope have run through the assessments of others in the camp. McCabe likened his boat to Mike Babcock’s first year in Toronto: “It’s not like he won the Stanley Cup. Do you fire him right away?” And maybe something’s being built, in Leafland and at Rowing Canada, that’ll one day be formidable.

But given the rowing program’s struggles here — and given that funding is tied to performance — the building likely just got tougher.

“We know that we have to get medals as a team if we want to keep getting the funding we’ve been getting,” McCabe said. “I guess, yeah, now I am worried to see what happens with Rowing Canada.”

Whether or not an eight featuring the members of the four and quad would have medalled is impossible to say. And maybe it’s not the point. Douglas Hamilton, Rowing Canada’s high-performance director in a previous era, said in a recent interview that this year’s small-boats focus distracted from a larger truth.

“I think the bigger issue is our lack of depth. In years past we’ve had an eight, but we’ve also had fours or quads or doubles or other boats,” said Hamilton. “And I guess the disappointing thing from my perspective is we’ve only got a four and a quad in the heavyweight men … Why is it that we have that lack of depth right now that we can’t have both the big boats and the small boats?”

Why is it, indeed? McCabe was the only one around to ask that question. And even though it wasn’t his responsibility to answer it, he was kind enough to give it a go.

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“I think (depth) is coming in the future here. We have a huge team going to under-23s, juniors and even senior worlds this year,” McCabe said. “And there are a lot of guys coming up through the system. Maybe we just kind of had a few years where the development stream dried up … I think that in the long term, Rowing Canada’s going to be okay.”

That’s small comfort for the current grinders of an at-sea program, some of whom may or may not be back for more. McCabe, speaking of “unfinished business,” said he probably would be. Either way, Rio made it obvious that, no matter if the boats of the future are big or small or both, McCabe and his crewmates are in desperate need of reinforcements.