Bitter and Sweet

Let's get to the sweet first...

Dominique Maltais, Silver Snowboard Cross!

Canada won two more medals today!  First it was Jan Hudec tying for the bronze medal with American Bode Miller in the Men's Super G.  This was Canada's first Alpine medal since 1992 when Kerrin Lee Gartner won Gold in Albertville, 1992. 

Here's a bit of McKinnon family trivia: Caitie's first name is Kerrin!  She is not named after Kerrin Lee Gartner, exactly, but we chose to spell the name that way (instead of Karen) because of her!

Next, it was Dominique Maltais, wining silver in the Women's Snowboard Cross. 

Yesterday, Denny Morrison picked up his second medal of the games, a Bronze, in the Men's 1500m Speedskating.  Add that to Patrick Chan's Silver in Men's Figure Skating and Canada now has 14 medals (4 Gold, 6 Silver, 4 Bronze).

Canada is still a medal threat in Men's Snowboard Cross (tomorrow), as well as in both Men's and Women's Curling, Men's and Women's Hockey, and of course the Ice Dance...

Which brings me to the bitter part of this post...

Virtue and Moir were breathtaking today...

I'm almost speechless about the Short Dance today.  Virtue and Moir were flawless.  Davis and White were equally perfect.  Somehow though, V+M were given a Level 3 on one part of the FinnStep, which cost them a point. 

Here's what the creators of the FinnStep had to say on Twitter:

From the creators of the FinnStep...

Even more disappointing is that they were behind David and White in every portion of the Program Component Scores.  This means the judges preferred Davis and White to Virtue and Moir in every aspect of the program.  Unbelievable!  And sadly, this means that D/W will have to fall on their butts for VM to win gold tomorrow night (and even that might not be enough)..

Even Marina Zoueva, who coaches both teams, said "Tessa and Scott's short dance was perfect from beginning to end".  Enough said.

Unfortunately, it doesn't end there.  The Short Dance was disappointing for a different reason than the Men's Free program.  In the Men's free program it was the skaters (almost all of them) who disappointed.  In the Short Dance, it was the judges.

The actual performances were breathtaking, and not just by Virtue/Moir and Davis/White. However, both Russian teams were scored higher than I thought they deserved (particularly the first team), while I think Weaver and Poje were robbed. 

In my opinion it should be Weaver/Poje challenging Pechalat/Bourzat for bronze.  I even asked "The Skating Lesson" about this BEFORE they skated.  Here's their response:

Hmmm....

I even thought Mitch Islam and Alexandra Paul got less than they deserved, even with the couple of bobbles by Alex in the twizzles.

So, I guess that just shows my Canadian bias!  This is all just my opinion, of course, and I'm sure many will disagree with me (but I don't care!).