Trevor Stewardson made either the ultimate sacrifice or a regrettable mistake on his way to the Olympic Games. Soon, he will know which of those is the answer.
Stewardson, the Canadian light heavyweight who had to go to arbitration to be named to the boxing team, left his wife and two young children behind in Thunder Bay as he moved to Medicine Hat to train for the Games here in Athens.
"I guess those are the kind of sacrifices an athlete has to make," said Stewardson, the unheralded fighter who won his first bout in the Olympic tournament early yesterday. "I basically missed the first year of my son's life to be here. That wasn't easy on anybody.
"A couple of times I had to drive 17 hours from Medicine Hat to Thunder Bay when there were medical issues."
What seemed easy was Stewardson's convincing 36-20 victory over Flavio Furtado of Cape Verde in front of only a few hundred spectators at the Peristeri Olympic Boxing Hall. On a Canadian boxing team of little expectations, he advanced while middleweight Jean Pascal of Montreal, as expected, lost his opening-round match to Cuban Yordani Despaigne Herrera by a 36-24 score, which was not representative of the quality of the fight.
The strange Olympic scoring system is just part of the unfortunate irony of Olympic boxing: Yesterday the more skilled and stylist Pascal was eliminated while the lanky Stewardson continues hoping he can fight his way into the hearts of Canadians.
"You want your name in the papers, you want to be known," Stewardson said. "You want people to think you're doing well for your country. This is one of the smallest (Canadian boxing) teams in history and one of the hardest draws in history. It's not about quantity, it's about quality."
"Trevor is a quiet, unassuming guy who has been through a lot just to get here," his coach, Charlie Stewart, said. "No one ever knows him or pays attention to him. That's how he won the Canadian championship."
When asked who he fights next, Stewardson answered: "I don't know and I don't care."
Ahmed Ismail of Egypt probably cares. He fights Stewardson in his next bout.
The five-man Canadian team was now down to four fighters and could be down to three by this morning when Adam Trupish of Windsor makes his Olympic debut. But it was a shame to see Pascal lose out, deserving of a longer stay.
"I'm going to try and enjoy the Games now as a spectator," he said. "I'm happy. I did well. He's a great fighter. I lost to a great fighter."