Owning the Podium: Wrestler Wiebe leads off a finishing nine of Canada medal hopes

RIO DE JANEIRO -- Derek Drouin had no clue at Tuesday’s Olympic high jump final that he would become Canada’s first gold medalist in a field event since 1932.

Too busy making his own history, he was, and Drouin says this golden icebreaker at the Olympic Stadium was only a matter of being early in the order. Shawn Barber missed his moment in the pole vault, finishing 10th, but Drouin stepped up a night later and made no mistake. On Thursday, he said he figures there’s more history to come as the track and field program winds down to these final three days.

“With the group we have now I think it’s only a matter of time,” Drouin said Thursday. “I think there’s a decent possibility that we’ll end these Games with more to join that group. I’m lucky to be the one to do it, but to be honest, with this team, it could have been anybody.”

The medal count is something most people will forget about as soon as Monday or Tuesday, when they’re packing up around here and the athletes and officials who’ve stuck around for Sunday’s closing ceremonies head home.

But in an era of Own the Podium, established 11 years ago toward the 2010 Winter Olympics and extended to these summer sports seven years ago, medals mean targeted money to programs -- the track team at last year’s world championships, for example, won eight medals, including a gold for Drouin, and that meant over $4 million in targeted funding.

Own the Podium chief Anne Merklinger and the COC set an official goal for the Canadian team of bettering London’s 18-medal total, and with four full days left, including Sunday, they’re at 14 and poised to add one more when Erica Wiebe wrestles for gold in her 75-kilo weight class. They could well zoom over the mark, too, if it all bounces right. Here’s the batting order of contenders as Canada closes in on its official target:

THURSDAY

Erica Wiebe (wrestling, 75kg). The freestyle wrestlers, and especially the women, comprise one of the stronger contingents here for Canada and they have flown relatively under the radar - until now, late in the Games, with Wiebe going for gold early in the evening here. After marching in the opening ceremony, they headed up the coast for a pre-Rio camp, and just missed Wednesday when Dori Yeats lost her bronze-medal match. Wiebe won her semifinal early Thursday afternoon and faces Kazakhstan’s Guzel Manyurova to decide who finishes on top of the podium here and who gets silver (6:35 p.m. local time - 5:35 p.m. eastern).

Damian Warner (decathlon). The decathlete has been making steady progress up the podium in his multisport event, from fifth at London 2012 to third at the 2013 worlds and in 2015, a Pan Am Games gold and world championships silver. The 1,500 metres will be the finale Thursday, scheduled to go off at 9:45 p.m. in Rio (8:45 eastern).

Andre De Grasse (200-metres). The bromance brewing between the 21-year-old De Grasse and elder statesman of the track Usain Bolt has been one of the subplots brewing through the 100 metres and the prelims for the 200. After Wednesday night’s semifinal that had them trading smiles at the finish, De Grasse told Brazilian TV “I really wanted to beat him - just to see what he has left.”

FRIDAY

Christine Sinclair & Co (soccer). The Canadian women’s soccer team is the country’s highest-profile team, men or women, outside of our bread and butter hockey, and although they didn’t make the gold-medal final at the Maracana their Friday bronze-medal opponent looms large. Host Brazil have shown signs of embracing their women’s team, at least before the men got rolling. But with a medal at stake they should be bringing high emotion and some kind of atmosphere for the Canadians to contend with in Sao Paulo as they try to equal their London 2012 result (1 p.m. in Brazil, 12 noon eastern).

4x100-metre relay. For this one, the Bolt vs. De Grasse is a race within a race within a race, with Jamaica, Canada and the U.S. vying for the top spot on the podium Friday night. Bolt turns 30 Sunday, the day these Games finish, and he’d love to go out with three more gold medals around his neck and the unofficial title of the greatest male Olympian of all time (Michael Phelps fans, start your engines). And for DeGrasse and his mates, part of the story involves redemption for the 2012 team that was disqualified from the bronze-medal position for stepping on a lane line. But only a part -- this is a completely different foursome with De Grasse, Aaron Brown, Brendon Rodney and Akeem Haynes (Bolade Ajomale and Oluwasegun Makinde are possible for the last slot) filling it out and going for Canada’s first medal in the event in 20 years.

SATURDAY

Mark De Jonge (kayak). If it all goes according to plan in Friday morning’s heats, kayak sprinter De Jonge should have a big shot for a medal in the men’s K-1 200-metres, scheduled for early Saturday. As the Pan Am champion and 2012 bronze medalist, and at the age of 32, handling Olympic pressures should be the least of his worries.

Brooke Henderson (golf). A mere young’un of 19, she’s already got a major tournament victory under her belt and if she can tame the new Olympic course, with it’s unpredictable winds and exotic critters among the gallery, she can be right there.

Melissa Bishop (800-metres). If the Pan Am Games champion and 2015 world championships sliver medalist is on her game -- she’s got to get through Thursday night’s semis first -- she could well go down as the exclamation point on a good Games for Canada in the medal table, and a good boost from those OTP accounts.