Maple Leaf Moments: Aiming Higher
Aiming higher: On the eighth day of competition at Vancouver 2010 the Canadian men’s cross-country team had one of its best Olympic performances ever with three men in the top nine of the 30km pursuit, highlighted by Canmore, AB’s Ivan Babikov’s fifth place finish. The pursuit has been renamed the skiathlon for Sochi 2014 and takes place February 9, 2014.
On this day: Legendary alpine skier Nancy Greene (Rossland, BC) wins her second medal at the 1968 Grenoble Winter Games after capturing gold in the giant slalom just two days after finishing in second place in the slalom event. Greene would capture two of Canada’s three medals at those Games.
Exactly 24 years later, another alpine skier stepped on the top of the podium after Calgary’s Kerrin Lee-Gartner won downhill gold in 1992 in Albertville. The gold marks Canada’s most recent Olympic champion in any Alpine Skiing event and the last medal won in the sport by a Canadian female.
One of Canada’s greatest Curling skips Sandra Schmirler leads her all-Regina women’s team consisting of Jan Betker, Joan McCusker, Marcia Gudereit and Atina Ford to the first-ever women’s Olympic Curling championships in 1998 in Nagano and remain the only Canadian women’s team to win gold.
Also on this day Pierre Lueders (Calgary, AB) and brakeman David MacEachern (Charlottetown, PEI) tie Italy for gold in the two-man Bobsleigh event in Nagano. It is Canada’s first-ever Olympic two-man medal and just the second time in Olympic history that two bobsleds have tied for first place.
