Last Updated on: 9th July 2015, 01:00 pm
Yesterday was quite the Olympic day for Canada. Wetook gold and silver in the women’s 2-man bobsleigh or is it bobsled,our women’s short track speedskatersgrabbed silver in the 3000m relay,Clara Hughes smoked the Richmond Oval record in the Women’s 5000M but ended up withthe bronzeafter that record was crushed twice more, and Team Canadaput a 7-3 hurting on russiato advance to the semi-finals Friday against Slovakia.
After all of that, Canada sits in 4th place with 15 medals, behind Norway 18, Germany 24 and the USA 28.
I turned off the US vs. Switzerland hockey game part way through to watch the 3000 metres, and I can say without question that I made the right choice. Even though she didn’t win the gold, Clara Hughes looks like she’s ending her career on top of her game. She nailed that race, and I honestly thought she had a shot at it. Any time you see 3 building records set in the same race, that’s a win. Stephanie Beckert is wicked fast and Martina Sablikova is like a machine. those 2 facts seem to have gotten a wee bit lost in all of the Canadian Clara Hughes coverage, so I thought I should mention them.
I didn’t manage to catch any of the bobsled yesterday, so hopefully I’ll be able to find one of the half million repeats and watch it then. That’s one of the best and worst things about the Olympic coverage this year. We have 3 main channels carrying everything and some others picking up a few events here and there, which is great because if there’s something you can’t stand on one station (curling comes to mind immediately), your odds of finding something better on another are pretty good. It’s also good for seeing the rest of something that gets cut off in favour of something else, which in the case of CTV is usually pointless yammering. Seriously guys, shut up. There are events going on, I’d like to see them without having to hunt for them elsewhere if you don’t mind. Ok…where was I. Oh yeah. Lots of channel options are great, but it also leads to a lot of duplication. Many times I’ve found 2 stations showing the same thing, and that includes reruns of things from the day before. I know it’s hard to fill all of that time and I appreciate how much better our coverage is than what the States is getting, but all the station flipping gets annoying after a while and maybe I’m too picky, but it seems like some of the scheduling could have been done a tiny bit better.
Ok, back to things I saw yesterday.
What can you say about Team Canada? They had a bit of a rough start, but damn are they awesome now. I think playing that extra game on Tuesday might have been the best thing that could have happened. It gave them more of a chance to jigger with line combinations and to work on chemistry. whatever they did, it payed off huge last night. I had a good feeling about their chances, but never in a million years did I expect them to do to Russia essentially the same thing theydid to the Germans the night before.
After all the talk about how difficult it would be to deal with Alexander Ovechkin, it ended up that he was pretty much a non-factor. Rick Nash did a great job of shutting him down at every turn, taking him almost completely out of the game. After watching that, I feel like no matter what gets put in front of us, our team is good enough now to deal with it. I reserve the right to change my tune if we end up face to face with Ryan Miller again, but I honestly think this team as it is now can beat him.
Speaking of Canada vs. the USA hockey games, to the surprise of nobody at all those 2 teams are playing in the women’s gold medal game tonight, so go Canada!
That’s all for now, hopefully I’ll be able to write more before everything ends. I can’t believe that in just a few days the Olympics will be all over and done with. It seems impossible.
