Misconduct | Which athlete did you have the most fun watching at the Winter Games?

Every week, journalists from Sports de The Press answer a question with pleasure, and also a little insolence

Jean-Francois Teotonio

Performances by ice dancing duo Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir have wowed – and mesmerized – Canadians since their stellar debut at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. But with social media and worldwide attention, their journey the most memorable, in my case, is the 2018 PyeongChang Games. They were favorites, and they won. And above all, beyond their dances and their medals, it was their chemistry that held the attention. Their seemingly passionate complicity. No, they weren’t a couple. Yes, they seemed to love each other madly. It was a sign of their talent for interpretation. But also of a life to rub shoulders with. In addition to their few minutes of spectacle on the ice brilliantly commented by Alain Goldberg, Canadians, Americans and other citizens of the world had fun guessing about their true relationship throughout the competition. It all culminated in a new world record, a second gold medal in two events in South Korea, an end to their career at the top of their game… and Tessa Virtue in a relationship with Morgan Rielly of the Maple Leafs.

Simon Olivier Lorange

With his strong personality and unique charisma, speed skater Marc Gagnon was one of the great sports stars in Quebec in the early 2000s. left the most memorable memory. On February 23, Gagnon made it through all the heats and won the gold medal in the 500m, before sharing another victory the same evening with the Canadian short track relay. I didn’t grow up in a family of sports fans, but I remember watching all the races with my parents, my brother and my sister. We looked like a Tim Hortons commercial, screaming for our athletes like we were watching Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Really good times.

Nicholas Richard

I grew up playing hockey. My environment was completely hockey. My first idols were hockey players. Like many young people of my generation, I was introduced to the world of women’s hockey during the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, thanks to Marie-Philip Poulin. Since then, I have followed her with interest and she has never disappointed me. Each presentation of the Olympic Games is an additional opportunity to witness one of the finest talents in the history of hockey. Period. An immensely gifted player, an extraordinary ambassador, but above all a born unifier. Everyone remembers the final in Sochi in 2014. Poulin has led this team for more than a decade and it is impossible to miss a single one of her appearances on the ice, to witness the brilliance of this great player.

Katherine Harvey Pinard

I was 11 years old when Charles Hamelin won his first relay medal in Turin in 2006. Fifteen years later, he is still there. Having myself speed skated for years when I was young, I have a rather special attachment to the sport. These are the events I look forward to every four years. And every time Hamelin raises his arms in the air when receiving his medal on the podium, I am moved. It’s unmissable. I must say that I’m not crying much, but still. Whatever happens in Beijing, this athlete has already achieved great things. Let’s enjoy his last laps…

Richard Labbe

My first Olympic memory worth mentioning will always be the Miracle of the USA hockey team in Lake Placid in 1980, and the face of that miracle will always be Jim Craig in my eyes. Imagine: this American goalkeeper, completely unknown before these Games, is the one who had to face the immense Vladislav Tretiak, the goalkeeper of the USSR, during a match that the Americans were not supposed to win. In the end, Tretiak was taken out of the game after two goals (what a bad decision, by the way), and it was Craig, the great unknown, who led his club to that unexpected 4-3 victory and then to the gold medal less than 48 hours later thanks to a triumph over the Finns. I can still see him, with his all-white mask adorned with green clovers, frustrating the dumbfounded Soviets for 60 minutes… After that, Jim Craig only made it to the NHL, it’s true. But no one can ever take away his 1980 gold medal.

Miguel Bujold

There are athletes that we find more sympathetic than others, and Joannie Rochette was part of this group for me, even though I had never met her. When her mother Thérèse died suddenly of a stroke at the young age of 55 a few days before the start of the Vancouver Games, like the whole country, I fervently wished for a medal for the Quebec skater. So I followed his competition closely, as did my mother, Lili, who now lives in Ontario and who herself has been struggling with serious heart problems for decades. My mother is far from a sports fan, but she had followed the 2010 Games with interest. Games that were marked in Canada by the golden goal of Sidney Crosby and the course of Rochette. As always, the competition was fierce, but thanks to dazzling performances, Rochette earned her place on the podium more than 12 points ahead of American Mirai Nagasu, who finished fourth. She won the bronze medal, sharing the podium with Korea’s Kim Yu-na (gold) and Japan’s Mao Asada (silver). A doubly emotional victory, it goes without saying, and my fondest memory of the Winter Games, like many other people.

Guillaume Lefrancois

Luka Gračnar, does that mean anything to you? Me, it meant nothing to me before the Sochi Games. One day, while going through the roster of the Slovenian men’s hockey team, I came across this then 20-year-old goalkeeper, who played for EC Salzburg, Austria. However, the goalkeeper coach of this club was Patrick Dallaire, a Quebecer. So I try my luck for an interview with Gračnar after training, where I must have been the only non-Slovene on the spot. Gračnar arrives, speaking very decent English. At the end of the interview, where we are of course talking about Dallaire, I ask him if he has learned a few words of French thanks to his coach. And he, without even asking me to turn off the recorder, starts swearing with the most beautiful Quebecois accent, the smile of the guy quite proud of his job. Gračnar took a special place in my heart from then on. Unfortunately for him, he suffered a 5-1 defeat in his only game of the Olympics, but he has nothing to be ashamed of: it was against the United States and Phil Kessel scored three times.

Jean-Francois Tremblay

My mother was a fan of figure skating. She especially adored Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler. I developed a surprisingly thorough knowledge of the star figure skaters of the early 1990s. In short. In 1992 in Albertville, I took a huge interest in the course of Brasseur and Eisler, finally bronze medalists in the pairs. Above all, I remember how outraged my mother was that the Duchesnays only won money, behind Marina Klimova and Sergei Ponomarenko in dance. From his analysis, the judges did not fully accept the innovations of the French. I also believe that she preferred Midori Ito to Kristi Yamaguchi, a bold position for the time. So what I followed with the most interest was certainly the figure skating competition at the 1994 Games, largely for the pleasure of experiencing it with my mother. Brasseur and Eisler won bronze again. Elvis Stojko has been fabulous in money. The very young Ukrainian Oksana Baiul won gold in the women’s category. And I see my mother shouting in the living room that we let Tonya Harding start her choreography again for an alleged shoelace problem. I think she didn’t like him too much.