Quotes of the Day

To get a sense of Canada's highs and lows at these 20th Winter Olympics, ponder a seven-hour span last Wednesday. Most Canadians awoke to news that cross-country skier Chandra Crawford of Canmore, Alta., had pocketed gold in the 1.1-km sprint, a bit of an improvement on her 46th-place finish at the 2005 world championship. Then Winnipeg's Cindy Klassen and Ottawa's Kristina Groves netted gold and silver, respectively, in speedskating. That made Klassen the first Canadian to win four medals at a single Olympics (she would add a fifth on Saturday). Three hours later, Canada survived the bumpy 27-lap final for silver in the women's short-track 3,000-m relay.

Wednesday's four medals--all by women--were promptly buried in the avalanche of gloom accompanying the loss that night by Canada's defending Olympic champion men's hockey team. Some $90 million of NHL talent was bounced from the Games by Russia, a turn of events team boss Wayne Gretzky called "absolutely devastating."

Nobody could say that about Canada's 24-medal total (7 gold, 10 silver, 7 bronze). That bested the previous record of 17 at Salt Lake City in 2002. But just off the podium, it gets even more interesting. Canadians posted 12 fourth-place finishes, results that coaches say point to a team that is on the way up again in Alpine skiing, and one that is gaining strength in the events added in the past 20 years. It's the reason the normally commitment-shy Canadian Olympic Committee has hatched a plan called Own the Podium 2010. The goal for Vancouver: deliver a whopping 35 medals--if the guys can hold up their end.

Logic says Canada should do well at events on ice or snow. Since the Calgary Games of 1988, Canada's medal tally has grown steadily, as has its team. (Canada sent a record 196 athletes to Torino, 39 more than went to Salt Lake City in 2002.) The number of medals up for grabs has also swelled: Calgary played host to 46 events; Torino had 84. Of the six new events in 2006, Canada medaled in three: Maelle Ricker's bronze in snowboard cross and silvers in men's and women's speedskating team pursuit.

Fully half of the events in Torino were added after 1984, and Canada excelled early, especially in those begun in the 1990s: freestyle skiing (1992), short-track speedskating (1992), women's biathlon (1994) and snowboarding, curling and women's hockey (1998). At Torino, Canada notched a pair of curling medals, making the nation six-for-six dating to 1998.

Canadians are good at sliding stones but, as CanWest sportswriter Cam Cole noted, they are pretty great at sliding headfirst on cafeteria trays. Canada is now a skeleton superpower, finishing 1-2-4 in the men's event and adding a bronze in the women's. What did the face-first sliders do right? "Even though skeleton is an individual sport, the athletes learned to work together and trust each other," says skeleton team manager Teresa Schlachter. There was a support team--coaches, sport scientists, massage therapists, video experts and nutritionists--"passionate about what they do, who worked together to help each athlete optimize their performance." The skeleton team is seeking new recruits, and it has world-ranked junior athletes waiting in the wings.

The record on snow isn't as good as the one on ice in some of the newer events. Sure, two-time World Cup-champion freestyle skier Jennifer Heil, of Spruce Grove, Alta., won gold. But after winning gold, silver and bronze in 1994, the men's freestylers missed the podium for the third straight Olympics. And no Canadian man has made a trip to an Olympic podium in snowboarding since the sport made its debut in 1998.

That left Canada's women to pick up the slack, and did they ever. Although outnumbered by men (110 to 88), the women won twice as many medals (16 to 8). That continues the trend since 2002, when women won nine and the men seven, plus a shared gold in pairs' figure skating. Do the Olympics mean something more to female athletes? "I think the women have something to prove," says Karin Lofstrom, executive director of the Canadian Association of Women and Sport. "This is their time to shine, to be in the limelight, and it's to their credit they're able to produce when they have one shot to do it."

Canada's gold-medal female hockey players don't dream of NHL careers. Its cross-country skiers have few chances to parlay their athletic prowess into pro-sports careers. "They're not going to get that, and they know it. It isn't about the money," says Lofstrom. "They're in sport because it's their passion and, corny as it sounds, for the love of sport." Lofstrom expects the female fortitude to continue in 2010. "The depth of the women's field is great. To have experience at these Games going into the next Games on home soil is an advantage."

Home cooking. That could be the recipe for Canada's Alpine skiers, who haven't medaled since 1994 but who came agonizingly close in Torino. Olympic rookies Erik Guay, Kelly VanderBeek and Francois Bourque settled for fourth; Genevieve Simard was fifth. Guay, 24, skied on a gimpy knee and missed bronze by 0.1 sec. in the super-G. "Fourth place is the worst," he said. "I'll be thinking about that one-tenth of a second for the next four years." So will VanderBeek, 23, who missed the Ladies' super-G podium by 0.03 sec.

"There's frustration at being so tantalizingly close mixed with satisfaction they're exceeding expectations," says former Crazy Canuck Ken Read, a two-time Olympian and head of Alpine Canada. "If those fourths had been a medal, people would have been doing backflips. We wanted this team to gain the experience to position themselves for 2010. They're doing that."

Read brought a tangible reminder home to Calgary from Torino: a rock from the finish areas of each of the four ski venues. "I stole them from the Italian Alps because we're turning over every rock trying to find the key to victory. You have to be relentlessly committed to excellence. In 2002 our best result was seventh. We've made a lot of progress. Now for the next four years, we've got to redouble that effort."

With the Torino Olympics in the books, the post-Games' analysis by Own the Podium 2010 chief Roger Jackson gets under way. Each sport will be evaluated to determine what was done right and what needs to change to meet the target of 35 medals and the No. 1 ranking at Vancouver-Whistler. "Own the Podium is a business plan. It's only been in place for 14 months," says Read. "All the winter sports have said, 'Let's roll up the sleeves and get going.'" Thirty-five total medals, from 24? Fourth to first in skiing in four years? It's doable, but now there's the added pressure of having put it on the table at home, like those rocks from Italy that sit on Read's desk. Just call them the weight of expectations.

• MARY JOLLIMORE