The first full week of Olympic action has flown by.
Midway through Day 8 of competition, Canada is sitting third in the overall standings with its 13 medals (one gold, four silver and eight bronze). Norway and Austria are holding tight to the top three spots.
It's been a fairly quiet 24 hours for Team Canada, following the excitement of the previous day's multiple medal wins, but there were still a few highlights. The women's hockey team did net a huge 11-0 win over Sweden in quarterfinals to earn their spot in semis this weekend. In women's alpine skiing, Marie-Michèle Gagnon sped to 14th in the Super-G event, while teammate Roni Remme finished 24th ahead of the downhill race in the coming days.
On the sliding track, skeleton athlete Mirela Rahneva set a women's track record for the Yanqing Sliding Centre with her first run, but a rockier second attempt means she heads into the last two runs of the competition ranked ninth. Former Whistler resident Jane Channell's first two runs earned her 17th place. Bronze medal-winning ski jumpers Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes and Matthew Soukup will also advance into the first round of the men’s individual large hill in 18th and 47th place, respectively.
Yesterday was a massive day in the halfpipe (literally). The 19-year-old Japanese snowboarder Kaishu Hirano set a world record for the highest halfpipe jump recorded in competition, after launching himself more than seven meters (24 feet) above the halfpipe lip. (Which means he was more than 13 meters, or 44 feet off the ground. Mind. Blown.) However, it was his older brother Ayumu Hirano that took home the gold with his stomped run (that kicked off with a triple cork, nbd.) The event also represented the end of an era, as veteran snowboarder and three-time Olympic gold medallist Shaun White dropped into the pipe for the last time. Competing in his fifth consecutive Olympics, the American finished fourth in the competition.
But we do have some good news to kick off the weekend: Canadians Meryeta O’Dine and Eliot Grondin just picked up a bronze medal in the first-ever Olympic mixed team snowboard cross event! That makes both athletes two-time medallists in Beijing, following O'Dine's bronze and Grondin's silver from earlier in the Games.
Local Liam Moffatt and teammate Tess Critchlow were unfortunately knocked out of the quarterfinal in that event.
Coming up tonight is men's hockey, more curling and a women's cross country skiing relay, before Sea to Sky athletes jump into action on Sunday. Women's big air snowboarding will feature locals Jasmine Baird and Brook Voight at 5:30 p.m., with women's slopestyle skiing qualifiers starting at the same time, following by the men's event at 8:30.
I'm officially signing off for the weekend, but I'll be back Monday to catch you up on a weekend full of Olympic action. (Just so we're all on the same page here, Olympics—particularly skiing and snowboarding events—shall absolutely take precedence over any major football games happening this weekend. Yes, you can still use those sports as an excuse to eat nachos.)
