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Canada has blown the podium

No gold, not even trace elements of silver, bronze for vaunted ski team

By: Jim Morris

Posted: 02/20/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

WHISTLER, B.C. -- How you lose really doesn't matter.

Lose by a little, lose by a lot, the end result is the same. The cheers are for someone else. The hugs after the race are conciliatory, not congratulations.

There were no excuses being made after Canada's skiers failed to win a medal in the men's Olympic super-giant slalom race Friday. There was plenty of regrets, a little anger, and a lot of questions about what went wrong.

"It hurts," said Erik Guay, who finished fifth, less than a heartbeat off the podium.

"It's just a bad week," said Manuel Osborne-Paradis, who fell about halfway down the 2,076-metre Dave Murray course.

"It sucks," snorted Robbie Dixon, who skied off the course.

"For me it's frustrating," said head coach Paul Kristofic. "It really pisses me off. You're choked the guys couldn't come up with it when the whole world was watching."

Despite the hype, and the millions of dollars spent on the program, Alpine Canada's hopes of winning three medals at the Vancouver Olympics have all but evaporated.

The women still have a chance at the podium in today's super-G. The last legitimate hope rests with Michael Janyk in the slalom.

Norway's Aksel Lund Svindal, who spends time training with the Canadians, won the gold in one minute, 30.4 seconds. He was chased by a pair of Americans. Bode Miller was second in 1:30.62, earning a silver medal to go with the bronze he won in the downhill. Andrew Weibrecht, who had never cracked the top 10 in a World Cup super-G, was third in 1:30.65.

So far Americans have won six of the 12 ski medals. Their haul includes one gold, three silvers and two bronze.

Canada has nothing.

"It's disappointing for us and Canada," said Guay. "We're here to deliver medals and we wanted to deliver medals.

"It just didn't happen."

Svindal thinks the pressure of skiing at home got to the Canadians.

"A little," he said. "I really wish they had gotten a medal."

Maybe the loss was most painful for Guay. The Mont-Tremblant, Que., resident made a small mistake at the top of the course and finished .34 behind Svindal and just .03 away from bronze.

That tiny gap might have just as well been the Grand Canyon for Guay, who finished fourth in super-G at the 2006 Turin Games and fifth in Monday's downhill.

"Today is a tougher one to swallow," he said. "I've been there many times and I just sort have blown it off as whatever.

"Today was my fault absolutely. I could have easily been there."

Osborne-Paradis, who won the opening super-G of the season at Lake Louise, Alta., looked off kilter from the start of his run.

"I was having problems on my right ski," said the Invermere, B.C., resident who was a disappointing 17th in the downhill. "It just seems all my right ski turns until I fell were not crisp as I would have liked them to be.

"That's ski racing. It's not my first week I've had a terrible week. It probably won't be my last either. It's just too bad it happened here at the Olympics."

The other Canadian in the field, Calgary's Jan Hudec, finished 23rd in 1:32.09.

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 20, 2010 D6

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