A Good Start!

Today was the first full day of competition, and Canada is off to a great start!

Mark McMorris won Canada's first medal of the games, a bronze, in the new Olympic sport of Snowboard Slopestyle, the Women's Hockey Team beat Switzerland, 5-0, to open their Olympic tournament, and sisters Justine and Chloe Dufour-Lapointe captured Gold and Silver in Women's Moguls.

Canadian Sisters win Gold and Silver in Women's Moguls!

The Dufour-Lapointe sisters story is kind of cool - they actually have an older sister, Maxime, who also qualified for the final of this event (along with yet another teammate).  What a great family to have 3 siblings all competing in the finals of an Olympic competition and to win two medals.  There has never been a sweep of all medals by a trio of siblings, now that would have been awesome!

All three of the Dufour-Lapointe sisters!

Canada's haul of 26 medals, 14 of them gold, in Vancouver, was our best showing ever, and many had attributed that to having the games at home in Vancouver.  So, naturally, you might think our expectations for Sochi would be more moderate, but you'd be wrong.

The (very un-Canadian sounding) Own The Podium program continues to support Canadian athletes, especially in the new "extreme" sports that have been added to the Olympics, and in which Canadians excel.  As such, the Associated Press is predicting Canada will win 31 medals, 13 of them gold in Sochi.  We'll see...

I love that Canadians are starting to be a little louder about cheering for our athletes, and aren't afraid to show some patriotism.  I also love the #WeAreWinter campaign by the Canadian Olympic Team.

The Figure Skating Team event also continued today, and Canada remains in second place behind the Russians after the qualification round (all the short programs), and after the free program of the pairs competition.

I was fortunate enough to be offered tickets for tonight's Figure Skating competitions and had to get up early (another night with less than 6 hours sleep) to get to the event on time.  Rickey stayed late so that I could watch the whole event (payback for me coming in early so that he could go to Opening Ceremonies).

I'll have more to say about the Figure Skating tomorrow.