Relay silver redemption after ‘Sochi drama’
Canadian medal breakthrough following Gough’s icebreaker eases four years of misery
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— A doubles luge sled is a crowded thing already, but that didn’t stop their teammates and coach from piling on when Tristan Walker and Justin Snith finished the final leg of Thursday’s relay run.
That’s the moment they all knew they had finally, and without a shadow of a doubt, won an Olympic medal in the team relay.
Afew minutes later they knew the medal’s colour — silver — and that sent them into another round of jumping, joyous group hugs. Canada had never won an Olympic medal in luge before these Games, and this dedicated band of sliders from Calgary has now done it twice in one week. Alex Gough won bronze in the women’s event and on Thursday she combined with Sam Edney and the doubles entry to win silver in the relay. Germany won the gold and Austria the bronze.
“It shows the strength of our team,” said Edney, who ended his luge career with this medal-winning run.
He doesn’t just mean their strength on the track. These are the same four Canadian athletes cheated out of a medal by Russians at the 2014 Sochi Games, in two different ways: first by doping Russian athletes, and second by tampering with the track in the team relay event.
When all the Russian doping cases from Sochi are finally settled, this team might still be upgraded to bronze in the relay from the 2014 Olympics.
But that result, with all the dubious circumstances around it, was all the more heartbreaking because it was the luge team’s third fourth-place finish at the Sochi Games.
“Tonight was about sliding for each other and sliding for Canada.” LUGER SAM EDNEY
Gough and the doubles also finished fourth.
“That fuelled us. That fuelled us for a long time,” Edney said. “I just know that we put in all the hard work and we did everything right. Tonight was about sliding for each other and sliding for Canada, and we did that.”
The two medals they’ve earned here along with Edney’s sixth-place finish — the best Olympic result for a Canadian man — go a long way toward erasing the memories of just missing the podium at the last Games.
“Sochi, for me, is now history,” Canada’s head coach Wolfgang Staudinger said. “It was very hard for me to get over the Sochi drama . . . it was very draining also for these guys. I know they were down but I’m very proud of them, how they recovered from such a setback and they did it in style.
“This was a top-notch performance.”
A team medal is particularly fitting for these sliders, who spend most of their careers competing in individual events but are a team in the best sense of the word.
They’ve trained together for more than a decade.
They’ve travelled the world as the little band of Canadians with a cando attitude taking on the sliding superpower nations. They’ve worked to turn what happened to them in Sochi into motivation for a better future for them and the Canadian luge program.
And now they’ve won an Olympic medal together.
The emotion of that was evident with Walker and Snith alternating between shaking sobs of relief and giddy laughter as they spoke after the event.
“Absolutely incredible,” Walker said, beaming with joy. “To be able to do that with those guys and compete together with them, it’s incredible.” This medal meant so much to them that, the night before in their own event doubles, they were happy with their fifth-place finish because they had mastered corner nine. That’s the trickiest part of the track here, and it’s what they knew they’d have to get right so they didn’t let their teammates down in the relay.
Gough starts the relay with her run of the track. When she hits the paddle at the bottom of the run, that releases Edney for his run. The doubles slide last.
Snith’s thoughts went back to Sochi before coming to rest on the joy that this medal win represents.
“We were so close in Sochi,” Snith said, tears running down his face. “And you spend four years that close, (thinking) what could have been, not having that moment. To finally have that moment is priceless.”
Success for this group, which has worked and struggled in relative obscurity, is the essence of what is still good about the Olympics.
“I could see they were ready,” said Staudinger, who himself won a doubles luge medal for Germany at the 1988 Calgary Games. “They were like going into battle in war. They knew what they wanted to do and they did it.”
This was Edney’s fourth Winter Games in a career than has spanned more than half his life and now, at 33 with an Olympic medal, he’s done.
Gough, 30, and the 26-year-old doubles team say they are still on the fence. Gough is leaning toward leaving the sport; Walker and Snith are leaning toward staying.
“A medal — that’s the best way to get out of the sport,” Staudinger said. “If they decide to retire now, I wouldn’t be upset. They’ve done their work.”