Anyone else feeling extra tired today?
It's not unusual for me to spend Mondays yawning non-stop, but this week I'm attributing that fatigue to a 16-hour time difference between here and Beijing, and my attempts to catch as many Olympic events as possible (in between all the usual weekend activities that take far too big a toll on my energy levels). Sleep is for the weak, right?
Honestly, sacrificing a few hours of sleep was worth it this weekend: It was an action-packed few days for Team Canada, with enough highs and lows to give you whiplash. And, now that I think about it, enough crashes to give you actual whiplash. (But hey, as more than a few people told me when I was learning to snowboard, if you're not falling, you're not trying.)
The highs? Canada is heading into the fifth day of competition with one gold, one silver and four bronze medals—a total of six more medals than we had when the weekend started. That puts Canada at second place in the overall medal count, behind only the Russian Olympic Committee.
It started with a bronze won by speed skater Isabelle Weidemann in the women's 3000m race, before moguls legend Mikael Kingsbury took a silver early Saturday morning in the bumpiest freestyle skiing event, for his third medal in as many Olympic starts. Kim Boutin also picked up a bronze in short track speed skating.
The finals didn't go quite as smoothly for Kingsbury's female counterparts, unfortunately. After Justine Dufour-Lapointe's heartbreaking crash in her first finals run, Whistler local Sofiane Gagnon suffered a similar fate in the second finals run of her first Olympic Games. (The 22-year-old made Whistler proud when she stood up, clipped back into her skis and finished off the course with a just-for-fun backflip.)
In women's slopestyle snowboarding, defending silver medallist Laurie Blouin was the lone Canadian to compete in finals after Whistler-based athletes Jasmine Baird and Brooke Voigt ranked 15th and 22nd, respectively, in the qualifying round. Blouin finished just shy of the podium after finishing fourth. (However, any of your kiwi pals in Whistler were probably celebrating hard after this event: 20-year-old phenom Zoi Sadowski-Synnott earned New Zealand its first-ever gold medal in any Winter Olympics with a pair of consecutive 1080s in her third and final run. She previously won big air bronze at the 2018 Games, but finished 13th in her Olympic slopestyle debut that year.)
Day 3 was a banner day for Canada's snowboard team, with Bromont, Que.'s Max Parrot coming back from a cancer diagnosis in 2018 and soaring his way to a gold medal in the men's slopestyle event with a couple triple 1620s. With Regina's Mark McMorris rounding out the podium in third place, the only bummer for locals was Darcy Sharpe missing from the finals field, after finishing 23rd in qualifying.
It marked McMorris' third bronze medal in as many Olympic slopestyle contests, making the snowboarder the first Olympian to win back-to-back-to-back bronze medals in the same individual event at the Winter Games, according to the Canadian Olympic Committee. The third Canadian in the final, Sébastien Toutant, place ninth.
Canada's slopestyle team will have a chance for redemption—or in Parrot's case, a repeat—in the big air event later this week.
I know more than a few locals had high hopes for Broderick Thompson in the weekend's downhill race, after the Whistler born-and-raised ski racer finished third in training last week. Unfortunately, Thompson, who's competing in his second Olympics, lost an edge and took a spill about halfway down the course, but fortunately, he's OK and will be back in the start gates for the Super-G race tonight at 7 p.m. The downhill event wasn't a bust for Team Canada by any means, with Whistler Mountain Ski Club (WMSC) alum Jack Crawford finishing just off the podium in fourth place.
“Until I went out it felt pretty good,” Thompson told the Canadian Olympic Committee following his run. “I was feeling strong, pushing the limit. Maybe a bit too much at the end there.”
The third Canadian Brodie Seger (another WMSC product, obviously) finished just out of the top 20, placing 22nd.
Another highlight, in case those weren't enough for you? Ski jumpers Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes, Alexandria Loutitt, Matthew Soukup and Abigail Strate sealed the deal in the mixed team event to earn Canada the bronze and make history in the process: their win marks Canada's first-ever Olympic ski jumping medal.
Because three kinds of skiing in one weekend is not enough skiing, the freestyle ski big air qualifiers also took place early on Sunday night B.C. time. Megan Oldham finished on top of the women’s qualification standings in first (!!) followed by teammate Olivia Asselin in 11th place, ahead of Monday night's finals. Vernon's Elena Gaskell didn't have the chance to compete in those events after suffering a devastating knee injury in training. In the men’s contest, only Evan McEachran will be moving on after Édouard Therriault finished 12th (one spot outside of the final roster), while Max Moffatt placed 20th and Teal Harle was 31st.
Moving from the snow to the sliding track, local luge athlete Reid Watts was also disappointed after finishing 17th in the men's singles event over the weekend, but will be back on his sled in a few days for relay action.
Also, a fun fact to kindly bring up if you hear anyone complaining about wearing a mask at work or in the gondola or the grocery store in the next couple of weeks: Canada's women's hockey team beat the Russians 6-1 *while wearing masks* to maintain their undefeated status in the tournament, following a delayed start time due to reported safety concerns.
I'm positive I'm missing at least a handful of other noteworthy Olympic moments from the past few days, but this is about all my post-weekend brain can handle at this point. For now, fire up the popcorn machine and get ready for some big air and alpine skiing tonight!
If you're as down with late nights/early mornings as I am, don't miss Pemberton's Trinity Ellis and Whistler's Natalie Corless sliding for Canada, as well as Whistler's Veronica Ravenna, competing for Argentina in the women's singles luge event. The athletes will hit the track for their third of four possible runs starting 3:50 a.m. Currently, Ellis is sitting in 13th place in the standings while Corless follows just behind in 15th. Ravenna is in 23rd after two runs.
