B. C. pride on display at Sochi
Canadian Sport Institute Pacific’s website tracks results for fans to follow homegrown talent
We are all Canadians when it comes to the Olympics. Not even the every- Games question of where Quebec would appear in the medal standings as her own country can shake our Maple Leaf pride when francophone names such as Bilodeau and DufourLapointe and Hamelin are atop the podium.
Nor does it seem to matter that the figure skating dance duo of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, the Ontario- born couple who helped Canada to a silver medal the first weekend in the team event, have lived and trained for years in Michigan under a Russian coach who also guides their American rivals.
If the athletes can mouth the words to O Canada as the flag is raised during the medal ceremony, while proudly wearing their CANADA jackets and sporty Great White North tuques, they’re all ours.
After all, it is ‘ our home and native land ... From far and wide.’
But still, we do seem to wear our own Olympic gear a little more proudly and allow our chests to puff out a tad more when somebody from our hometown or home province wins a medal.
It’s why the Canadian Sport Institute Pacific’s website breaks down results as B. C. and Canadian and has a separate medal table for B. C. athletes, be they homegrown and trained, homegrown but living elsewhere or skiers and boarders who have moved here to take advantage of state- of- theart training facilities.
“Denny Morrison, what a fantastic result,” Wendy Pattenden, CEO of CSIPacific, said of the Fort St. John native’s silver medal in the 1,000- metre long track speedskating event on Wednesday.
Morrison has lived for the past several years in Calgary, where he trains with the national team at the Olympic oval. But he’s still immensely proud of his B. C. roots.
“And ( Port Coquitlam’s) Kevin Reynolds, I was so happy for him to put down that ( secondbest) long skate in the team event ( in which Canada earned a silver),” said Pattenden. “And he still trains here.
“But I don’t want to be too much of a homer. We’ve got great athletes right across the country ... and elite athletes are very transient.”
Outside of the triumphs by the veteran Morrison, who only skated in the 1,000 metres after teammate Gilmore Junio graciously gave up his spot, and Reynolds, the quadruple jump dynamo, it was a bit of a tough first week for the B. C. contingent in Sochi.
Reynolds fell twice in his men’s short program on Thursday and finished 15th overall. And earlier in the week, there was emotion- spilling heartbreak for snowboarder Spencer O’Brien, a Courtenay product, and a jawbreaking crash from slopestyle skier Yuki Tsubota of Whistler.
O’Brien, a slopestyle world champion in 2013, was last in the 12- women final at Sochi and was inconsolable afterward, sobbing that she was “really sad that I let Canada down.” That prompted a flurry of support for her on Twitter.
The unheralded Tsubota, who had qualified for the women’s ski slopestyle final with the fourth- best score, had a spectacular, tumbling crash in her second run of the final. Remarkably, she escaped without any leg or knee damage, but did fracture her jaw.
In other events, Ben Thomsen of Invermere and Manuel Osborne- Paradis of North Vancouver were 19th and 25th, respectively, in the marquee men’s downhill. Short- track speedskater Jessica Hewitt of Kamloops was 13th in the women’s 500 metres, snowboarder Mercedes Nicoll of Whistler was 25th in the women’s halfpipe and biathlete Megan Heinicke of Prince George didn’t finish in the 10K pursuit and was 59th in the 7.5K sprint.
But things look promising for B. C. athletes in the next week.
Morrison is back in action this morning in the 1,500- metre event, a distance at which he is a two- time world champion. He then skates in the final weekend in the team pursuit, an event in which the Canadian men struck gold in 2010.
Hewitt skates the short- track relay on Tuesday with the Canadian women favoured to medal.
Improving bobsleigh pilot Justin Kripps of Summerland has top- five potential, and an outside shot at the podium, in the two- man Sunday and the four- man next Saturday. Osborne- Paradis and Thomsen race the super- G next Saturday, the same day Mike Janyk of Whistler goes in the men’s slalom.
But the most likely medal winners from this province are in snowboard cross, ski cross and ski halfpipe.
Reigning Olympic SBX champion Maëlle Ricker of North Vancouver should still be a threat in women’s snowboardcross, even though she will be boarding with a splint to protect her broken left forearm.
“I haven’t changed my expectations at all,” Ricker said in Sochi this week.
Three men, Rob Fagan of Cranbrook, Kevin Hill of Vernon and Chris Robanske, a Calgary native now living in North Vancouver, have been on the podium in snowboard cross on the World Cup circuit and could pull off something special in Russia.
All three women in ski cross — which goes Friday — are from B. C.: Kelsey Serwa ( Kelowna), Marielle Thompson ( Whistler) and Georgia Simmerling ( West Vancouver). Serwa was the 2011 world champion and Thompson won the Crystal Globe in 2012 and leads the points standings on the World Cup circuit this season.
On the men’s ski cross side, Dave Duncan is a two- time World Cup winner this season. Duncan is one of those transient athletes Pattenden referred to and a guy CSIPacific likes to call one of ours.
He was born and grew up in London, Ont., then spent four years skiing alpine events collegiately for the University of Anchorage in Alaska. After graduating, he moved to Golden in 2007 — “I basically threw a dart on a map of B. C.” — and joined the national skicross team that year. He has lived in Whistler since 2011.
“The Ontario government still provides me with funding ... and I’m a product of the 100- vertical feet of Boler Mountain, skied there every day after school,” says Duncan, 31.
“But I identify now with being a West Coast person. I love the mountains and the trees and I love the lifestyle.”
Duncan missed the 2010 Games after breaking his collarbone in a training- run crash on Cypress. His replacement, Brady Leman of Calgary, then had to pull out after breaking a bone in his leg the day before the event.
Chris Del Bosco, a Vail, Colo., native with dual citizenship, had a bronze medal in his grasp in the 2010 final, only to crash over the final jump while pushing for second place.
“Redemption is a great word,” said Duncan of his outlook for Sochi. “For Brady and Del as well. All three of us didn’t come out of those Olympics the way we wanted. We’ve all got a chip on our shoulder.”
With his first career World Cup wins under his belt, Duncan is confident he can medal, even given the unpredictable nature of four- skier heat racing.
“I’m skiing very well, and if I do what I’m capable of, it’s going to be very hard to beat me.”
Men’s ski halfpipe, in the Olympics for the first time, goes Tuesday with Vernon’s Justin Dorey, Penticton’s Matt Margetts and Mike Riddle, a Sherwood Park, Alta., native now living in Squamish, all considered podium contenders.
Reigning world champion Rosalind ( Roz) Groenewoud, another Albertan who has relocated to Squamish, is a medal favourite in the women’s ski halfpipe on Thursday after finishing second at the recent X Games.