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Salt Lake Olympics sweet and sour for Team Canada

There hasn’t been a lot to celebrate so far in the 2002 Winter Olympics. Medal favourites and top contenders are stumbling, crashing, or otherwise coming up short, and not just for Canada either.

There hasn’t been a lot to celebrate so far in the 2002 Winter Olympics. Medal favourites and top contenders are stumbling, crashing, or otherwise coming up short, and not just for Canada either.

In the downhill, the heavy favourite going into the Olympics was Austria’s Stephen Eberharter. The 32 year old is leading the overall World Cup standings by more than 350 points. He has six World Cup downhill gold medals, and three bronze medals in 10 competitions, and has first place finishes in the giant slalom and super G this year.

In the Olympic downhill at Snowbasin he settled for third behind teammate Franz Strobl and Lasse Kjus of Norway. If you think that wasn’t an upset, you didn’t see Eberharter’s face at the finish line.

Canada’s Edi Podivinsky, although he has been having trouble on the World Cup circuit in recent years, has always been a different story during the Olympics. At Lillehammer in 1994, he won a bronze medal in the downhill, becoming only the second Canadian male to medal in the downhill at the Games. Steve Podborski was the first.

At Nagano in 1998, Podivinsky finished fifth.

At the Salt Lake Games he crashed in the first training run and finished 24 th in the race. This was his last kick at the can as he will retire after this season.

"It’s disappointing. You work so hard for something and then it just doesn’t go the way you want. I’m sure there’s lots of athletes here saying the same thing. But I really felt this was going to be a great race for me. Even though I struggled all year I really prepared for this race," said Podivinsky.

His teammates, Darin McBeath of Calgary and David Anderson of Rossland, finished in 32 nd and 38 th respectively out of a field of 55 racers.

Despite the fact that they led the field in the women’s downhill training, Canada’s Melanie Turgeon, Austria’s Michaela Dorfmeister, and Picabo Street of the U.S., finished eighth, ninth and 15 th respectively in the women’s downhill race. Dorfmeister is currently the World Cup leader.

The gold medal went to Carole Montillet of France, who has only one World Cup gold medal to her credit, in the super G. Silver went to Isolde Kostner of Italy and bronze to Renate Gotschl of Austria, both of whom are strong medal contenders in any competition.

The 25-year-old Turgeon said she was happy were her eighth place finish.

"I’ve done a lot of work to get back on track after the last couple of races on the World Cup so that’s my own personal victory," she said.

"Carole (Montillet) hasn’t had the best results lately but she has been a contender at every race. She’s been really strong and I think the French girls deserve all the credit because of everything they went through in the fall."

Regine Cavagnoud was killed in a training accident at the start of the ski season.

The women’s moguls team got off to a great start, with all three skiers qualifying for the finals. There wasn’t a medal in it for them, but for Jennifer Heil of Spruce Grove, Alberta – known to her teammates as "Little Pepper" – there was the next best thing. The 18 year old, in her first year with the team, finished fourth by one-one-hundredth of a point behind Tae Satoya of Japan. The gold went to favourite Kari Traa of Norway and the silver to American Shannon Bahrke.

Whistler skiers Tami Bradley and Kelly Ringstad were 13 th and 14 th .

The jumps were smaller, which hurt a lot of the competitors who were attempting triple manoeuvres – they simply ran out of air time to finish that third move.

There is another Whistler connection. Both Heil and Bahrke train in Whistler during the summer with Smart Mogul Skiing.

For the men’s moguls team, the bad news came weeks before the Games with the announcement that Pierre-Alexandre Rousseau – a medal favourite – had fractured a vertebrae during World Cup training.

As it stood only three out of the four Canadian skiers who qualified for the Olympics made it into the finals. Jean-Luc Brassard, a gold medalist in Lillehammer, didn’t qualify for the finals.

That left Scott Bellavance of Prince George, Ryan Johnson of Calgary and Stephane Rochon of Saint-Sauveur, Quebec. Rochon was in sixth place in the overall World Cup standings going into the Games, and the number two mogul skier. Unfortunately he had trouble landing the bottom air, and ended up in 15 th place.

Bellavance and Johnson were solid, however, and finished in sixth and seventh place, respectively.

The gold went to Janne Lahtela of Finland, the silver to Travis Mayer of the U.S., and the bronze to Richard Gay of France.

Vancouver’s Natasza Zurek, Canada’s only female halfpipe entry and a heavy medal favourite, fell during her qualification run to finish back in 15 th place.

The gold went to Kelly Clark of the U.S. who is a virtual unknown in the sport. She was followed by favourite Doriane Vidal of France, and Fabienne Reuteler of Switzerland.

The men’s team, which is loaded with some of the top snowboarders on the World Cup circuit, probably wishes they could have that day back. Whistler’s Trevor Andrew was the only one of four riders to qualify for the finals, and finished in ninth place overall. He was filling in for Quebec’s Guillaume Morisset who is out indefinitely with a ligament injury.

Locals Mike Michalchuk and Daniel Migneault, and Quebec’s Brett Carpentier – all of whom are in the top 20 in the World Cup standings and generally qualify for every event they enter – found themselves on the sideline for the finals.

The U.S. riders swept the podium with Ross Powers winning gold, Danny Kass winning silver, and Thomas Jarret winning bronze.

At press time, Canada has one bronze and one silver on the big board.

The silver went to the pairs figure skating team of Jamie Salé and David Pelletier, which has sparked enough controversy that the International Skating Union has launched an inquest into the judging. Most experts thought the Canadian pair deserved gold for their program, and couldn’t help noticing that the so-called East-Bloc judges from countries with ties to the former Soviet Union cast their first place votes to the Russian team of Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze.

The controversy continued. Canadain figure skater Elvis Stojko expressed his surprise that one mistake would cost him a whole 0.7 points. It has also been alleged that the fix is already in for the ice dancing medals, with the Russian and French judges allegedly agreeing to prop up one another in the judging and relegate the Canadians, Shae Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz, to fifth place.

The bronze medal came from speed skater Cindy Klassen in the 3000 metres.

One of Canada’s medal favourites in speed skating, Jeremy Wotherspoon of Alberta, failed to finish the men’s 500 metres when he caught his toe on the outside of the track and fell just seconds after the start.

On the bright side, the curling teams were unbeaten at press time, and the Canadian women’s hockey team pummelled Kazakhstand 7-0.

The puck drops on Friday for the men’s hockey team, and the freestyle aerials event, where Canada has a number of strong contenders, will kick off Saturday with the qualifiers.