After suffering disappointment last night in women's moguls, Canadian fans found a surprise end to their drought of not winning a gold on home soil. The whole country exhaled when Alexandre Bilodeau was named the gold medalist in men's moguls on Cypress Mountain Sunday night.
Now that their drought has ended and the pressure has been lifted off the shoulders of every Canadian Olympian, look for Canada to contend for many medals in the 13 days.
While Bilodeau was the big story for the Canadians, a shock bronze medalist in Bryon Wilson in moguls and the silver from Johnny Spillane in nordic combined gave America two unexpected medalists to stay on top of the table.
France won the most golds on Valentine's Day thanks to a last minute sprint by Jason Lamy-Chappuis to beat Spillane in the biathlon 10k sprint. The other gold came from biathlon, a sport normally dominated by Norway and Germany, where weather conditions worsened during the competition and the fornuate Vincent Jay started within the first ten skiiers, took the early lead and was not beat. Jay gave France their second gold of the day, a day where two silvers would have been celebrated by the French.
On the other side of Whistler, at the sliding center, the men's luge completed the final of four runs and the gold went to Felix Loch of Germany who led after all four runs. Like the biathlon race when inclement weather struck, the luge competition was changed when the start gate was lowered 900 feet to reduce speed and gave the top lugers like 2-time defending gold medalist Armin Zoeggeler of Italy a disadvantage. Loch's countryman David Moeller won silver and Zoeggeler took bronze.
The other medal event Sunday was the women's 3000 meter race in speed skating. Like Sven Kramer in the men's 5000 meter on Saturday, Czech skater Martina Sablikova had to wait four pairings to see if her time would be eclipsed, but it never was. Sablikova gave the Czech Republic its first gold medal in speed skating. Stephanie Beckert of Germany and Kristina Groves of Canada added to their country's respective medal count with a silver for Beckert and bronze for Groves.
Tommorrow's action is jam-packed starting with the men's downhill and ending with the pairs' free skate, where Chinese couple Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo lead after the short program.
Sunday's Gold Medal Winners:
Jason Lamy-Chappuis (Nordic Combined- France)
Vincent Jay (Biathlon- France)
Martina Sablikova (Speed Skating- Czech Republic)
Felix Loch (Luge-Germany)
Alexandre Bilodeau (Freestyle Skiing- Canada)
Medal Count:
USA- 6
Germany- 4
France, Canada- 3
Korea, Italy- 2
Czech Republic, Netherlands, Slovakia, Australia, Norway, Poland, Austria, Croatia, Russia- 1
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