On Dylan Wykes and three other late Canadian qualifiers for the London Olympics

For some athletes and teams, an Olympic spot can be locked up long before the Games begin. For others like marathoner Dylan Wykes, it comes right down to the wire. Wykes, a native of Kingston, Ontario who trains in Vancouver, planned to go for the Canadian qualifying standard in a March marathon in Japan, but was forced out of the race thanks to stomach issues, making it look like his Olympic dream might be dead. Wykes quietly kept training, though, found another last-chance race and ran the second-fastest marathon time ever recorded by a Canadian in the Netherlands in April, qualifying for the Olympics in the process. He's far from the only Canadian athlete to pick up their London berth late in the game, though. Here are three other notable qualifiers who made it in on some of their final chances.

Hilary Stellingwurf, 1,500 metres: Stellingwurf's one of Canada's top female middle distance runners, but had struggled to meet the Olympic qualification standard. The Guelph-based runner received an excellent opportunity to do just that in June, picking up an invitation to compete in a Diamond League event in Rome against world-class athletes. Things didn't go quite as smoothly as she would have liked, though, as she came down with a severe case of food poisoning just 48 hours before her race and vomited so much that she was almost five pounds below her usual 106-pound race weight by the time the event started. She considered withdrawing, but pushed through, recording a personal best time of 4:05.8 and beating the Canadian standard by nearly a second, then promptly throwing up again afterwards. Here's hoping the food's more agreeable for her in London.

Mark de Jonge, kayaking: Halifax-based sprint kayaker de Jonge may be considered a strong medal prospect now, but that wasn't always the case. He was close to making the Canadian team for both the 2004 and 2008 Olympics, but came up short both times and appeared doomed by the curse of good enough, achingly close to the top level but not quite able to get over the hump and become a truly elite athlete. His struggles to qualify convinced de Jonge to abandon competitive kayaking for 30 months and pursue an engineering career, but he soon came back to the sport and finished sixth in the K-1 200 metre event at the 2011 world championships. Strong results followed, but adversity did as well; he broke a finger in an April weightlifting accident and missed a month of competition, making it look like he might narrowly fail to make the Olympics again. de Jonge came through in the clutch, though, not only nailing down an Olympic berth in the final Canadian trials in Montreal this June, but setting a world record in the process with a time of 33.8 seconds. If he can do that again in these Games, Canadian fans will be very glad he came back to kayaking.

The women's basketball team: It's been a tough decade for the Canadian women's basketball team, which failed to qualify in both 2004 and 2008. They almost didn't make it again this year, losing a crucial quarterfinal game 59-56 to Croatia at June's FIBA qualifiers in Turkey. A victory in that game would have given the Canadians an Olympic berth, but their loss knocked them to the consolation side of the bracket and left Canada as one of four countries vying for a single berth. They pulled it off, though, picking up a 58-41 win over Argentina the next day and then beating Japan 71-63 less than 24 hours later to clinch the final Olympic berth. The crucial victory over the Japanese came on Canada Day, which was a perfectly appropriate day for the national basketball squad to take their final chance and make the most of it. They're off to London now, and earning that Olympic berth could prove crucial for the future development of women's basketball in Canada.