Luckily, cross country skiing is known for good sportsmanship, and this was no exception. A Norwegian coach nearby saved the day, handing Renner immediately a man's pole that, though some 10-12 cm longer than her other pole, allowed Renner to stay with the front pack, and ultimately earn the Canadian team a silver medal.
In the sprint relay — a new Olympic event — one skier does a 1.1-kilometre loop and then tags her partner, who skis the same loop. Each skier completes three legs. After finishing second in the semifinal to advance, Renner started the first leg of the final. The Canadian tandem led after each of the first two exchanges and Renner was in the midst of an uphill section on her second loop when the pole broke. "I don't even know what happened, I just know that all of a sudden I was kind of flapping with one arm," she said, laughing. "The next thing I knew, there were three racers in front of me. The worst thing I could have done was panic."
She didn't. Instead she finished the leg only 2.5 seconds behind but Scott made up almost the entire difference on the next lap. Renner, supplied with a replacement pole by a Canadian coach while in the transition area, held the position on her third-and-final lap, and Scott began the final loop a nose behind Finland's Virpi Kuitunen, neck-and-neck with Sweden's Lina Andersson. The race came down to the final stretch, when Andersson broke a stride clear of Scott to win the gold medal with Anna Dahlberg in 16 minutes 36.9 seconds. Scott, 31, and Renner, 29, finished 0.6 seconds behind for the silver. Finland won the bronze, 2.3 seconds off the pace, and Norway finished fourth.
Renner and Scott have raced against and with each other in Alberta since childhood days. "I said to Sara when we were finishing our warmup today, 'We've come a long way baby,'" said Scott, who almost retired after winning a gold medal in Salt Lake City, and almost certainly will stop ski racing after this World Cup season. "To finish it with an Olympic medal...well, I'm not going to say it's surreal," Scott said. "We promised each other that we wouldn't get to get too fruity at the end of this."
Renner, in her third Olympics, won an Olympic medal for the first time. She had long competed in Scott's shadow until winning a bronze medal at the world championships in the sprint last year. "We promised we wouldn't say, 'It's like a dream,' because I think we really earned this," Renner said. "We have been medal contenders in this event and to actually do it at the Olympic Games, in 20 years we can have a reunion and reminisce about this day. We can share it with each other and that's pretty special. We are a unique team." So it was fitting that they ended up winning their silver in a most unique way.