Word: goldings
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...sense of Canada's highs and lows at these 20th Winter Olympics, ponder a seven-hour span last Wednesday. Most Canadians awoke to news that cross-country skier Chandra Crawford of Canmore, Alta., had pocketed gold in the 1.1-km sprint, a bit of an improvement on her 46th-place finish at the 2005 world championship. Then Winnipeg's Cindy Klassen and Ottawa's Kristina Groves netted gold and silver, respectively, in speedskating. That made Klassen the first Canadian to win four medals at a single Olympics (she would add a fifth on Saturday). Three hours later, Canada survived...
...Nobody could say that about Canada's 24-medal total (7 gold, 10 silver, 7 bronze). That bested the previous record of 17 at Salt Lake City in 2002. But just off the podium, it gets even more interesting. Canadians posted 12 fourth-place finishes, results that coaches say point to a team that is on the way up again in Alpine skiing, and one that is gaining strength in the events added in the past 20 years. It's the reason the normally commitment-shy Canadian Olympic Committee has hatched a plan called Own the Podium 2010. The goal...
...record on snow isn't as good as the one on ice in some of the newer events. Sure, two-time World Cup-champion freestyle skier Jennifer Heil, of Spruce Grove, Alta., won gold. But after winning gold, silver and bronze in 1994, the men's freestylers missed the podium for the third straight Olympics. And no Canadian man has made a trip to an Olympic podium in snowboarding since the sport made its debut...
...That left Canada's women to pick up the slack, and did they ever. Although outnumbered by men (110 to 88), the women won twice as many medals (16 to 8). That continues the trend since 2002, when women won nine and the men seven, plus a shared gold in pairs' figure skating. Do the Olympics mean something more to female athletes? "I think the women have something to prove," says Karin Lofstrom, executive director of the Canadian Association of Women and Sport. "This is their time to shine, to be in the limelight, and it's to their credit...
...Canada's gold-medal female hockey players don't dream of NHL careers. Its cross-country skiers have few chances to parlay their athletic prowess into pro-sports careers. "They're not going to get that, and they know it. It isn't about the money," says Lofstrom. "They're in sport because it's their passion and, corny as it sounds, for the love of sport." Lofstrom expects the female fortitude to continue in 2010. "The depth of the women's field is great. To have experience at these Games going into the next Games on home soil...