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Pique's 2022 Winter Olympic Blog: Feb. 10

Canada added four more medals to its tally Wednesday
Megan Lalonde
Megan Lalonde
eliot grondin snowboard cross olympic finals
Team Canada snowboarder Eliot Grondin, right, wins a silver medal in men’s snowboard cross during the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games on Thursday, February 10, 2022. Photo by Leah Hennel/COC

Another day, another medal update!! 

Wednesday was huge not just for Team Canada, but for Whistler's tight-knit ski racing community: Whistler Mountain Ski Club alum Jack Crawford won BRONZE in the alpine combined event! Better yet, clubmates Brodie Seger  and Broderick Thompson gave locals even more reasons to celebrate after both finishing in the top 10. 

Crawford's podium is the highlight of what's been a super strong Olympic Games for the 24-year-old skier. Originally from Toronto, the Whistler resident came fourth in the men's downhill earlier this week—missing out on a medal by just seven hundredths of a second—before ranking sixth in Tuesday's Super-G race. Crawford's third-place result in alpine combined makes him the first Canadian to ever win an Olympic medal in the event, and just the fourth Canadian man to take home an Olympic medal in alpine skiing. 


Even though Wednesday night's downhill run was just one half of the event, it was almost exciting enough on its own. Crawford ranked second after the first leg of the two-part race, just two hundredths of a second (!!) behind leader Aleksander Aamodt Kilde of Norway. Seger and Thompson, meanwhile, each stayed on their feet and put down solid runs to cross the finish line in third and eighth place heading into the slalom. 

In a post-downhill interview, Seger told commentators he hadn't strapped on slalom gear in two years—gonna go ahead and guess that's why he took to Instagram stories to ask his followers for slalom tips during the break between runs. Probably the hardest I've laughed at any Olympics-related content so far. (OK, maybe I laughed harder at his post-slalom commentary, when he told the cameras, "That's enough of that," immediately after crossing the finish line. Gold medal in comedy for you, Brodie.) 


Despite it not necessarily being their specialty, both Thompson and Seger posted strong enough slalom performances to finish right beside each other in the final ranking, landing eighth and ninth, respectively. What a Wednesday!

Side note, who else just learned moustaches lose you medals? 
 


Crawford was one of four athletes to bring home a medal for Canada yesterday, with freestyle skiing's aerial squad (Marion Thénault, Miha Fontaine, and Lewis Irving) earning a bronze in the first-ever Olympic mixed team aerials event and speed skater Isabelle Weidemann winning her second medal of the games, this time a silver in the women's 5000 metre race. She's the first Canadian to win more than one medal at these Olympics! 

It was also a good day for snowboarding fans, after 20-year-old Eliot Grondin from Sainte-Marie, Que. grabbed a silver medal for Team Canada in snowboard cross, in an insanely tight photo-finish race.


That brings Canada's medal haul to 12. Broken down, its seven bronze, four silver and one gold, thanks to snowboarder Max Parrot's slopestyle win.

In women's snowboard halfpipe finals, the two Canadians—20-year-old Elizabeth Hosking and 16-year-old Brooke D'Hondt—were unfortunately shut out of the medals, but both pulled out their best tricks to land sixth and tenth, respectively. American halfpipe snowboarder Chloe Kim successfully defended her gold medal from PyeongChang to win that event. 

Whistlerites also got their last look at a couple of local luge athletes sliding in the Olympics (at least for the next four years), as Pemberton's Trinity Ellis and Whistler's Reid Watts joined doubles pair Tristan Walker and Justin Snith in the luge team relay event yesterday. All three sleds made it down the track smoothly, netting themselves a sixth-place result. 


Thursday will be a slightly chiller day in terms of events (maybe not so much if you're a curling fan), but I'd encourage all of my fellow Olympic -watchers to take this as a well-earned day to give the screens a rest. After all, this weekend is going to be another action-packed one, beginning with mixed team snowboard cross Friday night B.C. time.