China hosted the Winter Olympics in Beijing and Zhangjiakou last February amid controversy over the alleged genocide of the Uighurs, the general human rights situation in the country, as well as the holding such an event while the COVID-19 pandemic was still raging.
That did not prevent Canada and other Western countries from taking part. Maple leaf representatives brought home 26 medals from these Olympics — 4 gold, 8 silver and 14 bronze — giving the 11e rank in the country.
These 26 medals — which place Canada in 4e rank if we only take into account the total, behind Norway (37), the representatives of the Olympic Committee of Russia (32) and Germany (27) — constitute its 2e highest total medal count, tied with Sochi 2014. This is down slightly from the previous Games in Pyeongchang, when Canada brought home 29 medals.
His collection of four gold medals, however, is his lowest total since the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City in 2002, where Canada finished the fortnight with three first places.
Page of history for Kingsbury, but…
Mikaël Kingsbury was to add to this total of gold medals, but Sweden’s Walter Wallberg played the spoilsport.
the king moguls had to settle for silver, behind an imperial Wallberg at Genting Snow Park in Zhangjiakou, which still allowed him to become the first mogul to collect three Olympic medals.
Noble in defeat, Kingsbury hastened to welcome him to the very select club of Olympic gold medalists in the discipline, which has only eight members: Edgar Grospiron, Jean-Luc Brassard, Jonny Moseley, Janne Lahtela , Dale Begg-Smith, Alexandre Bilodeau — twice —, Kingsbury and now Wallberg.
This third Olympic medal, after the silver in Sochi and the gold in Pyeongchang, allowed him to join the Norwegian Kari Traa, the only mogul to have achieved the feat before him.
Kingsbury will aim for the absolute mark at Milan-Cortina in 2026.
Poulin, again and again
Marie-Philip Poulin lifted Canada to the top of the world again at these Games, scoring two goals and assisting in another in a 3-2 win over the United States in the women’s hockey tournament, avenging the loss suffered in a shootout four years earlier.
For Poulin, it was her sixth and seventh goals in four Olympic finals, she who has three gold medals and a silver at the Games.
It was the sixth time in seven Olympic women’s hockey tournaments that Canada and the United States had met in the final. The Canadians have a 4-2 advantage.
Parrot: the beautiful story of the Games
On February 7, 2019, Maxence Parrot was bedridden, battling Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Three years later to the day, the snowboarder from Bromont won the slopestyle gold medal at the Beijing Games, Canada’s first at these Olympics.
Parrot, silver medalist in Pyeongchang, was accompanied on the podium by his compatriot Mark McMorris, winner of a bronze medal for the third Games in a row. 17-year-old Chinese Yiming Su slotted in between to win the silver.
Qualified for the Chinese Games a year before they were held, Parrot had taken the crazy gamble of not competing in any competition before flying to Beijing. A gamble that paid off.
The 28-year-old Quebecer added to his harvest a week later, winning the bronze medal in the big jump.
Swan Song by Charles Hamelin…
These Beijing Games marked the end of an era in winter sports in the country as short track speed skater Charles Hamelin signed his last performances there. He made sure they were noticed.
In his very last race of his fifth Games, Hamelin helped Steven Dubois, Pascal Dion and Jordan Pierre-Gilles win gold in the 5000m relay, his sixth Olympic medal. Maxime Laoun also participated in the Canadian successes by running the preliminaries.
This sixth medal allows him to join skater Cindy Klassen as the greatest Canadian medalists of the Winter Games. Hamelin completed his last lap a few months later, at the World Championships presented in Montreal, where the same quintet won bronze in the 5000m.
As for Dubois, he completed a trio of medals with this victory in Beijing, adding this gold charm to those of silver and bronze won in the 1500m and 500m.
Speed skater Isabelle Weidemann also achieved this unusual feat, winning gold in the team pursuit with Valérie Maltais and Ivanie Blondin, silver in the 5000m, as well as bronze in the 3000m.
…and the Dufour-Lapointe sisters
We also witnessed the end of an era in freestyle skiing, as Justine and Chloé Dufour-Lapointe bowed out.
Justine and Chloe scored a historic double in Sochi in 2014 before Justine added a silver medal in Pyeongchang four years later. The Olympic treble was unlikely, but she never thought she would leave the stage like this, crashing heavily in Final 1, to finally take 20e rank.
This spectacular outing put Chloé’s high-level day in the background, as she took a well-deserved ninth place at the end of the competition.
If the two sisters completed the season on the World Cup circuit, the decision fell a few months later: Chloé was going to devote herself to other projects, while Justine would swap mogul skiing for free skiing.