How identical relay silver medals mean different things for Canada's men and women and the L.A. Olympics

What’s the difference between a silver medal and a silver medal?

For Canada’s 4x100-metre relay teams at the Commonwealth Games, it’s expectations.

The women’s squad arrived in Glasgow the second-fastest seed time, trailing only Jamaica. In Saturday night’s final, anchor runner Audrey Leduc crossed the line second, trailing only — you guessed it — Jamaica. A surprise win over the pre-race favourites would qualify as an upset and a bonus, but a silver medal still equals success.

But the men’s team entered Commonwealth with the fastest seed time in the field, and the 37.56-second clocking they ran to win silver at World Relays in May remains the second best relay result on the planet this year. Only the U.S. outran them at World Relays, and the Americans weren’t in Glasgow. If Canada performed as expected, every other team should have been jockeying for second behind them.

So why does the men’s silver medal feel like a triumph, too?

Perspective.

Canada's relay team talks about the stress of waiting for their silver medal win to be official

Anchor runner Andre De Grasse crossed the finish line second, but Canada was quickly DQ’d when a video review seemed to reveal that leadoff runner Aaron Brown had stepped on the line marking the inside of his lane. Suddenly Canada faced the prospect of entering the Commonwealth Games as favourites and leaving empty-handed, and of pondering how the most experienced sprint relay quartet on earth had failed such a basic test.

But then came the auxiliary footage, a camera angle showing that Brown had, indeed, stayed in his lane, and illustrating the thinness of the margin between hugging a curve and cutting a corner. The first one is a veteran move, the second a rookie mistake in a race