By STEVE BUFFERY -- Toronto Sun
  SYDNEY -- There's nothing like the prospect of gold to get everyone's blood pumping, especially a gold medal.

 The Canadian Olympic team was reeling from a disappointing first day of competition, but yesterday's stunning victory by Kingston's Simon Whitfield in the triathlon on generated a tidal wave of excitment through the athletes' village.

 Surprise medals early in the Olympics have lifted the spirits and rallied Canadian athletes in the past. From the response yesterday, Whitfield's feat will have a similiar effect in Sydney.

 "It's huge," said boxer Scott MacIntosh, who watched the race on a TV at the team's training centre in Sydney. "We didn't win a lot of gold medals in Atlanta and now we've won one right off the bat.

 "This lets everybody know that we're supposed to be here and that we're world contenders."

 "I know this has pumped me up a little bit," Rhiannon Leier, a member of Canada's swim team, said. "It's always exciting when a Canadian athlete wins a medal."

 Long jumper Rich Duncan and a few of his teammates on the Canadian track and field team watched the end of the triathlon on a TV at a McDonald's near their training camp in Runaway Bay, on Australia's Gold Coast.

 "We were screaming, clapping and rooting him on," Duncan said. "And all the locals were asking us: 'Who is that guy?' "

 "There's nothing better to get the spirit of the team up than a medal, and there's nothing better than gold, that's for sure," the St. Catharines athlete said.