Olympians make triumphant return
Plane from Pyeongchang full of athletes happy to be on home soil after intense competition
If young freestylers were thrilled when Cassie Sharpe brought her first-place X Games medal to Mount Washington two years ago, how will they feel when she takes her shiny new Olympic gold to her home hill?
“Do you want (to see) it?” she asked, after landing and clearing customs at the Vancouver airport Monday morning.
Unlike other Team Canada athletes on the same flight from South Korea who wore their medals around their necks, Sharpe’s gold was stuffed in her front pocket.
“It feels phenomenal (to hold it),” she said, after digging it out and holding it up for display. “It feels even better to hold it on Canadian soil. It feels good bringing it home. I’m so happy to be home. I just want to go lay in my bed and cook myself some food and just hang out for a bit.”
Sharpe won her gold in women’s freestyle halfpipe, dazzling judges with her audacious tricks, spins, big air and pat landings. The 25-yearold Comox native’s gold is part of a record medal haul by Canada: 11 gold, eight silver and 10 bronze. The male-female medal split was 12-12, with another five medals coming in male-female team sports.
As Patrick Chan emerged from customs, maple leaf-waving fans began singing O Canada. The 10-time Canadian men’s figurechampion was returning from his final Olympics as a skater. A Cantonese speaker, Chan said he would love to be at Beijing 2022 as a coach. The 27-year-old won gold in the team skating event at Pyeongchang.
“I’ll take a look at it (gold medal) every once in a while,” he said.
“It’s sometimes better to keep it away and then just enjoy it once in a while.”
A recent transplant to Vancouver, Chan hopes to open a skating school — after a short rest, that is.
“I’ve waited for so long, in a way,” he said. “It’s a new beginning and a rebirth. I’m going to just take a week to not do anything, not be a skater, not be an athlete and just enjoy B.C., enjoy everything I love about
this place.”
Hockey player Meghan Agosta returns to her job as a police officer in Vancouver after leaving a Winter Games without a gold for the first time in four Olympics. Team Canada gave up a late tying goal against the U.S. in the gold-medal game, then lost in a shootout for silver.
“It’s amazing to be back on home soil,” the 31-year-old Agosta said. “It’s unfortunate that (the shootout) was the way it happened. But I’m so proud of us and happy for the girls in that room. We showed a lot of character.”
Speaking of which, Agosta put forth a strong defence of Jocelyne Larocque, who was widely vilified for removing the silver from around her neck during the medal ceremony. Agosta stood immediately to Larocque’s right.
“You know what? It was the heat of the moment. The decision she made, there was no ill will, she didn’t mean to disrespect anybody. We train so hard, we went there for gold. Jocelyne Larocque is an amazing leader, an amazing person and a great teammate.”
For one reason or another, everyone was happy to be back home.
“My results, how we performed, I’m very disappointed with,” bobsleigh pilot Chris Spring said. “It was really tough to not bring home a medal for Canada.”
Spring, a native Australian who lives in Alberta and competes for Canada, piloted his bobsleigh to a couple of top-four training times at the sliding centre in South Korea, but finished 15th in the four-man event. He was later highly critical, questioning the integrity of officials.