On to the Games at last.
With Cayman Islands, Colombia, Ghana, Montenegro, Pakistan, Peru and Serbia making their Winter Olympic Games debuts, 82 countries brought 2,566 athletes to the Games.
Canada’s 14 gold medals set a record for most gold medals by any country at a single Winter Olympics. (Norway and Germany equaled that record 8 years later in Pyeongchang, South Korea and Norway broke the record in 2022 in Beijing.) It still stands as the most gold medals won by the host country.
Ski cross made its Olympic debut.
Although only winning nine gold medals, the United States set a record for most total medals at a single Winter Games with 37. (Norway set a new record of 39 in Pyeongchang.) Bode Miller (men’s super combined) and Shaun White (snowboard halfpipe) were among the notable U S gold medalists.
Some American athletes combined special achievements with their gold medals. Lindsey Vonn became the first American woman to win the downhill event. Speed skater Shani Davis won the 1,000 meter race becoming the first man to win that race in consecutive Olympic Games. And the U S four man bobsled team won a gold in that event after a gap of 62 years.
Apolo Ohno’s bronze medal in the 1,500 meter short track was his seventh Winter Olympics medal – the most for any American.
The Canadian men’s ice hockey team avenged a 5-3 preliminary round loss to the United States with a 3-2 overtime win in the gold medal game. Sidney Crosby scored the game winning goal.
[Photo from Wikimedia Commons BY s.yume, CC BY SA 2.0.]
Alexandre Bilodeau, drawing inspiration not only from the home crowd but from his older brother Frederic who has cerebral palsy, won the men’s moguls event. He earned a place in history as the first Canadian to capture a gold medal in an Olympics held in Canada.
Canadian women won the gold and silver medals in the women’s bobsled. When the American team won the bronze medal it marked the first time in the history of the event that a German team failed to reach the podium.
The Canadian ice dancing team of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir won the gold medal. It was the first win in the event for a North American country.
The husband-and-wife team of Zhao Hongbo and Shen Xue from China won the figure skating pairs gold medal. It was not only the first gold medal in China’s figure skating history but it was the first time since 1960 that a pair from the USSR or Russia didn’t capture the gold.
Swiss ski jumper Simon Ammann won gold in both the normal hill and large hill events – his third and fourth individual gold medals. No man has yet won more in that event.
Tragedy, triumph, and fortitude – Olympic inspiration.
Nodar Kumaritashvili’s death wasn’t the only tragedy associated with the Vancouver Games. The story of aerial skier Jeret “Speedy” Peterson was one of triumph at the games and tragedy afterward. Peterson was the 2005 World Cup champion, a seven-time winner on the World Cup circuit, a three-time American champion, and a three-time Olympic team member.
In Turin (2006) his second trip to the Olympics ended with Peterson being dismissed from the Games. Although he finished seventh, he still went out with the team and in that celebration, got involved in a very public fight with a friend. What the public didn’t know at the time was that some months prior to that competition a friend of Peterson’s committed suicide in front of him.
Later, Peterson opened up about many of his personal struggles and demons. He had been the victim of sexual abuse as an infant, which his mother later told him about and his 5-year-old sister had been killed in an accident involving a drunk driver. This led to his own fights with alcohol, depression and suicidal thoughts.
In something of a redemptive moment, Peterson –
[Photo from Wikimedia Commons BY Duncan-Rawlinson-CC-BY-2.0.]
won the silver medal in Vancouver after landing his signature jump the Hurricane – in which he completed five twists and three somersaults. After winning his medal Peterson said, “I know that a lot of people go through a lot of things in their life, and I just want them to realize they can overcome anything. There’s light at the end of the tunnel and mine was silver and I love it.”
But depression proved too great a foe. Five months later to the day, Peterson drove to Lambs Canyon in Utah between Salt Lake City and Park City and shot himself. A suicide note was found near his car.
Another competitor who faced and overcame personal tragedy was Canadian figure skater Joannie Rochette. Her mother had died suddenly and unexpectedly less than a week before the competition began. She won the bronze medal and inspired her nation.
[Photo from CBC.]
Americans Lindsay Vonn and Julia Mancuso combined to win four medals in Alpine skiing with Vonn taking gold in the downhill and bronze in and Super G and Mancuso winning a pair of silver medals joining Vonn on the podium of the downhill and earning second place in the super combined. However, it’s probable that neither of those is as impressive as the super combined bronze medal won by Sweden’s Anja Pärson.
In her downhill run on 17 February, Pärson didn’t merely crash. She flew 60 meters (nearly 200 feet) in the air, severely bruised several bones, and suffered internal bleeding in her calf. While her injuries weren’t debilitating or perhaps because they weren’t debilitating, she returned to the slope the next day to win her bronze medal.
FIS Ski World Cup, Semmering 2008.
[Photo from Wikimedia Commons BY Christian-Jansky-BY-CC-BY-SA-3.0.]
We needn’t look very far to find yet another display of remarkable fortitude that resulted in another bronze medal. This time it comes in the person of Petra Majdič of Slovenia. During a practice round for the women’s cross-country sprint, Majdič skidded off the ice. She refused medical treatment and insisted on continuing to compete. Although she collapsed in pain after every heat, somehow she managed to muster the strength to win the bronze medal – her country’s first Olympic medal in the sport. It was only afterward that she found she had broken four ribs in the training run fall.
[Photo from Wikimedia Commons BY Vekoslav Rajh, MORS BY-CC-BY-SA-3.0.]
Two days before the closing ceremony, Majdič and Rochette received the Terry Fox Award honoring an Olympian, who touched the world with courage, humility and extraordinary athletic abilities at the 2010 Games.