{"id":5522,"date":"2014-02-12T17:57:26","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T22:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=5522"},"modified":"2014-02-19T17:21:57","modified_gmt":"2014-02-19T22:21:57","slug":"canadians-earn-9-olympic-medals-in-sochi-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/canadians-earn-9-olympic-medals-in-sochi-so-far\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadians earn 9 Olympic Medals in Sochi so far"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jeff Doner<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now well into the first week of competition, the successes of Canada\u2019s athletes are finally starting to dominate the headlines coming out of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.<\/p>\n

Initially bogged down by reports of bad tap water, poor hotel conditions and botched performances at the opening ceremonies, people are starting to finally realize why they\u2019re all there and why we\u2019re all watching.<\/p>\n

For one, Canada\u2019s athletes went in with a bang and have made an early statement, capturing four gold, three silver and two bronze medals at press time, which has them perched near the top the medal standings.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s still a long way to go, but maybe the Canadian Olympic Committee\u2019s goal of finishing first overall in the medal count wasn\u2019t so off base after all.<\/p>\n

Starting things off was snowboarder Mark Morris, who captured Canada\u2019s first medal, fighting through a broken rib to win bronze in the newly featured slope style event on day one.<\/p>\n

Then, perhaps one of the bigger Olympic stories thus far, was the three Dufour-Lapointe sisters who competed in the freestyle skiing ladies\u2019 moguls. Amazingly, Justine and Chloe combined for a one-two punch in capturing the gold and silver in that event.<\/p>\n

That moves us to another debut event, the team free-dance competition. At first, rumours of an alleged scandal between US and Russian judges dominated the news wire, but the Canadian contingent, buoyed by some very strong performances, was still able to come up with the silver medal on Sunday night.
\nRussia ended up taking gold, while the United States sank to the bronze medal position.<\/p>\n

By the time day three took off, I knew exactly what I was going to be watching on Monday morning, one of my absolute favourite events \u2013 speed skating.
\nThere really isn\u2019t anything more exciting, in my opinion, and in this event Canada is expected to make some noise with a good mix of veterans and youth.<\/p>\n

Leading the pack is Charles Hamelin, 29, who now has three gold medals and one silver thus far from three Olympics.<\/p>\n

Hamelin is a medal favourite in all four short track speed skating events and he started things off on the right foot by winning a gold medal in the 1500m final on Monday, narrowly beating out opponents from China and Russia.<\/p>\n

Heading back outside to the slopes, Alex Bilodeau, who became a national hero after winning Canada\u2019s first Olympic gold on home soil in Vancouver, was back to defend his title in freestyle men\u2019s moguls.<\/p>\n

Surrounded by a talented pool of Canadian teammates, Bilodeau was joined by Mikael Kingsbury and Marc-Antoine Gagnon in the finals.
\nLet\u2019s just say all three sent a message that Canada owns the moguls.<\/p>\n

With an impressive combined score, Bilodeau won gold to become the first athlete ever to win back to back gold medals in the event.<\/p>\n

Kingsbury won silver, while Gagnon painfully was knocked down to fourth place behind the Russian competitor, preventing a Canadian podium sweep.
\nAlso worth mentioning from the first few days of competition is the women\u2019s ice hockey, who won their first two games of the tournament.
\nFirst they beat Switzerland 5 \u2013 0, but they quickly found out it wouldn\u2019t be so easy against Finland on Monday.<\/p>\n

With the score locked at 0 \u2013 0 going into the third period, team Canada stepped the intensity up a notch and ended up pulling out a gutsy 3 \u2013 0 victory.<\/p>\n

Also starting off on the right foot were the Canadian curling teams, with the men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams starting out with early wins.<\/p>\n

Over the next few days keep an eye out for plenty of speed skating events in the long and short track; women\u2019s and men\u2019s curling; women\u2019s hockey game against the US Wednesday; the men\u2019s hockey team will lace up for their first game Thursday against Norway, Friday against Austria and then Sunday against Finland; Aurora\u2019s Derek Livingston will be competing in the snowboard half pipe event this week; and Alexandra Paul and Mitchell Islam of Barrie will be competing in the ice dance.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now well into the first week of competition, the successes of Canada\u2019s athletes are finally starting to dominate the headlines coming out of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-1r4","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-07 21:40:40","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}