Snowboard cross is an exciting, surprising, stressful sport. Talk to Eliot Grondin and Meryeta O’Dine.
Posted at 10:20 p.m.
Updated at 10:35 p.m.
Canadian snowboarders came together to win the bronze medal in a thrilling mixed snowboard cross final.
This is a second medal respectively at these Beijing Games for Grondin and O’Dine. He had won silver in the men’s event, she had won bronze in the women’s event.
In the final, Grondin finished third in his descent, after being caught in the second half of the course. This meant that O’Dine had to start a few tenths of a second after the leaders of her race.
There was a great battle for a podium in the middle of the descent… until Meryeta O’Dine crashed at the same time as the Italian Caterina Carpano. The American Lindsey Jacobellis then spun straight ahead to allow Nick Baumgartner and her to win Olympic gold. Italian Omar Visintin watched from the bottom of the track as his teammate Michela Moioli headed for a guaranteed silver medal.
But the third place was not yet decided. Meryeta O’Dine had to get up as quickly as possible to try to cross the finish line in third position. She did.
The Canadian duo thus set foot on the very first Olympic podium in this discipline. As during the entire hour and a half of the competition, it was snowing heavily during the medal ceremony at the bottom of the track.
The Grondin rocket
Grondin’s magic is his dazzling departures. As soon as the doors open, you have the impression that he is already two or three board lengths ahead. This allows him in particular to absorb any feedback from his opponents.
And to give ballast to his compatriot Meryeta O’Dine, who rushes after him by taking up the gap he left behind. It happened in halves and quarters. The tandem was placed in second position during these stages.
The other Canadian duo, consisting of Liam Moffatt and Tess Critchlow, was eliminated by virtue of their third place in the quarterfinals. It was also during this wave that the Austrian duo of men’s Olympic champion Alessandro Haemmerle was excluded from the semi-final portrait, finishing fourth.