Favourite Olympic Moment

I wasn't expecting to watch the Olympics alot, particularly with my thesis looming; but the Olympics always finds a way to suck me in.

Today was in general a good day for Canada. Cindy Klassen and Kristina Groves won gold and silver in the 1500m long-track speed skating and a team of short-track speed skaters won silver in the 3000m relay. Unfortunately, Team Canada was disappointingly eliminated from Men's Hockey with a poor performance.

Now, Canada won an additional medal today (or yesterday, the 22nd) to bring it up to a best of 18 medals for the country.

Chandra Crawford raced in the 1.1 km cross-country skiing sprint competition. Now, this was her first Olympic games, so there was no medal expectation from her. But, she had a game plan that she wanted to execute in each of her races. She'd take the early lead, let someone lead the downhill portion so she could draught off them, then pull away on the uphill into the final lanes in front of the stands. This got her into the finals with fellow Canadian Beckie Scott, a medal contender.

What no one expected was that this plan would work brilliantly in the finals, so much so that she had a full second lead over her competition to take gold!

Now, participating in your first Olympics must be exciting enough. A top-10 finish would probably be a highlight in your life...but to win the gold medal! Needless to say, she was bursting with happiness and joy.

Now this is my favourite 2006 olympic moment: The announcer is going through the script in announcing the medal winner, "Coming in first, winning the gold medal, representing Canada..." and so forth, and you just see Chandra Crawford just itching to pounce on that podium. When they finally announce her name, she's on it, hands raised, full of exuberance, biggest smile in the world and dancing around like she's at her friend's house. It's that naked joy, unrestrained and uninhibited, that I could watch all day long. Congratulations Chandra!

Courtesy CBC