As Super Saturday gets underway, Team Canada waits on the guys

RIO DE JANEIRO - Super Saturday is the midpoint of any Olympic Games, when the sporting focus shifts and the entire mechanism of staging an event of this magnitude is pushed to the outer edges of its limits.

Of the Games’ two centrepiece programs, swimming finishes up, and track hits stride to take over from here.

In Rio, the weather’s playing along, as morning dawned sunny and warming after three days of off-and-on rain.

And concerning the Canada camp, the question is being posed that implicitly suggests another shift is in order: Hey fellas, where are ya?

What a poser that's been. The Canadian women have been in raging form, led by a new Olympic standard-setter in 16-year-old Penny Oleksiak. All 10 medals that Canada has claimed here so far have gone to women.

Among the men, though, it's been different. The latest, best chances for a first trip to the podium flew by Friday, when Sydney 2000 gold medalist Daniel Nestor and his partner here Vasek Pospisil came out flat in their bronze-medal match against Americans Jack Sock and Steve Johnson. Among a trio of Canadian contenders in racewalk, Evan Dunfee was tops, in 10th place.

Earlier in the week, Santo Condorelli came a mere 3/100ths of a second from the podium in the 100-metre free, and judo’s Antoine Valois-Fortier, a bronze medalist four years ago in London, fell at the repechage final stage.

Going into Saturday, Canada stood right on their pre-Games target of 12th with 10 medals total, including golds to Oleksiak and trampolinist Rosie MacLennan. Filter that to women-only, though, and Canada is sixth.

What’s going on here? Part of this was predictable, on a Team Canada that’s comprised 59 per cent of women. There have been disappointments like the racewalkers, and a men’s swimming contingent that has reached only two finals. There's luck, too, with Condorelli’s narrow miss a matter of fractions -- and Ryan Cochrane, a two-time Olympic medalist, goes in Saturday night’s final session in the Olympic Aquatic Center pool trying to reverse the trend. Oleksiak, meantime, swims the butterfly leg of the IM relay and can equal Cindy Klassen’s overall Canadian Games record five medals at Turin’s 2006 Winter Olympics.

Maybe it's just a matter of time, with track and field offering up a number of top male contenders including pole vaulter Shawn Barber and high jumper Derek Drouin.

Or maybe we should just stop fretting and enjoy a fine opening week, said Patricia Obee.

“We still have a week,” said the Canadian rower, who partnered with Lindsay Jennerich to win a silver in the women’s lightweight double sculls on Friday. “I hope that the men get on to the podium - but if they don’t, I think we should embrace it. We’re a country that supports female athletes, and I think that’s pretty special too.”