Virtue & Moir : Flawless

Ice dancing was always one of my favorite sport to look at. The skaters are always so beautiful and elegant. My favorite couple retired few years ago: Patrice Lauzon and Marie-france Dubreuil! To me, there were the greatest even thought, they didn’t have the chance to win an Olympic medal after Marie-France was injured. We are lucky to have them as analysts during the Olympics. Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir are absolutely wonderful. Young and beautiful, talented and so incredibly fascinating, they will be the best of this discipline for a long time.

Sunday night, they offer a flawless performance that put them ahead of the competition. The judges should have place them even higher, but we feel a little bit suspicion as they may have want to still give a chance to the Russian to win the gold medal. To night, it’s the free problem and I hope our channel will show more then just few competitors.

First double medalist: Kristina Grooves

For several, the long track skating was supposed to give us a lot of medal. We did get 3 since the beginning of the games, which is great if you asked me, but since I wasn’t ask, there are a lot of disappointment because some of our skaters didn’t do what they were expected to.

Kristina Grooves gave it all att he 1,500m, and there she is holding another medal, silver like this one. She was the leader all along, but at the very end, she missed the first position by so little: congratulations to Kristina, a great champion. A new discipline this year : ski cross, so very spectacular. We had a chance of Medal, but with all the pressure on the athlete shoulder, the gold only was accepted. Going for all or nothing, Christopher Delbosco lost control in a risky jump and fell so the hope for medal.

Saturday summary

n short track, we had hope for medals but effort was in vain. The Hamelin brothers made it to the final five, but finished 4 and 5. They started their run strongly, but lack of juice at the end. This strategy didn’t pay off and the Koreans benefited of it. On the woman side, Kalina Roberge wasn’t at her best; she ended up finished second in the little final, her final ranking being #10. But I want to congratulate Tania Vincent who made it to the final. At 34 years old, it’s her last Olympics. What she did was incredible, considering that she had a difficult surgery to a hip and come back anyway: An example of determination and courage. Important mention to our Canadian on the 30km pursuit: 3 of our athletes finished in the top 9. This is quite something. Ivan Babikov finished #5, Georges Gray #8 and Alex Harvey #9.

Gold #4

In Alpine Skiing, Erik Guay had another chance to go for a medal on the super G. He finished in fifth position. He was so close of the podium! In any case, this was a tremendous performance.

On the men side, on skeleton, Michael Douglas was disqualified because his equipment arrived 3 minutes late to the check up. He was a hope for a medal, but Jon Montgomery was in much better place to get one: before the last descent, he was second. The under dog went down there with no error at all and made a terrific run. It was up to Martin Dunkiers from Norway to keep his rank, and, the little mistake he did was too much and Jon gets the gold.

Shit happens....

I want to talk, I NEED talk about Mélissa Hollingsworth. Since she had won the bronze Medal on skeleton 4 years ago in Turin, this young lady was the Queen of her discipline. No need to say that with all the pressure put by Canada on our athletes, she needed to win the gold medal. On her last descent, it was almost certain that she was going to get the Silver, getting the gold being almost impossible because of the great performance of her rivale Amy Williams. But the worst happened, and she finished fifth.

The critics are hard with her and qualify this performance like disastrous. I would like to see them going down there and do better? I hope she will be able to keep her mind positive and strong and that her sponsors will stay behind her. She is the best, and, shit happens. And it happened to her today and it was not just her fault: How Canada possibly thought of finishing first on the medal run?

Another Gold for Canada

On speed skating, 1000m, Christine Nesbitt, the actual world champion, did as expected and won the gold medal for Canada, by ,02 seconds. It was only in the last 200m that we were sure she would make it. Congratulation to a great champion! Let’s also mention the great performance of Kristina Groves, a bronze medalist in Vancouver already, for her fourth position. She finished .06 seconds only behind the last place on the podium.Ladies Halfpipe in the snowboard competition, Mercedes Nicolls did great by finishing #6. The girls gave everything they had and we could see an apparent evolution from the last Olympics. Congratulations to Mercedes to be among the best.

In figure skating, on the men side, Patrick Chan didn’t made a podium as we all expected to, but, the 3 medalists did great. A fifth position is nothing to be shamed of.

There is not better gift...

On her twentieth birthday, Marianne St-Gelais offered not only to herself, but to all Canada, a silver medal on 500m in short track. Saguenay Lac-St-Jean is euphoric! She couldn't have ask for a better birthday present. Jessica Gregg finished #4 and Kalina Roberge, that we expected to win, still did good and finished #6. On alpine skiing, downhill, Britt Janyk made a terrific descent and finally finished #6. She was very excited and she had all the reasons to be proud of her as we expected another woman there. It was a first participation for her. Justine Lamoureux made it the final of the Halfpipe in Snowboard. He finally finished #7, but considering the very high level of competition there, including the American delegation lead by Shaun White, now, 2 times Olympic gold medalist, this 33 year old men can be proud.