Listen to this article
Estimated 3 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
Follow Winter Olympic SportsPersonalize Your Feed
It took nine days before a Canadian athlete won a gold medal at the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympics — the longest the country has ever taken to win gold at the Winter Games in 58 years.
Freestyle skier Mikaël Kingsbury put an end to the drought on Sunday morning after winning the second Olympic gold medal of his career.
The 33-year-old is the only men’s freestyle skier in history to own five Olympic medals. He previously won moguls gold in 2018 and won silver medals at both the 2014 and 2022 Olympic Games.
“I gave everything, I left nothing in the tank and finished my career being the first ever [men’s] duals gold medallist at the Olympics — one of the best days of my life,” Kingsbury said after the win.
The last time it took Canada this long to step on top of the podium at a Winter Games was in Grenoble, France, in 1968.
On the ninth day, alpine champion Nancy Greene captured gold in the giant slalom. Despite pulling ligaments in her ankle a month before the Games, she ended up clinching two of Canada’s three Olympic medals that year.
The next longest gold dry spell took place 50 years ago at the 1976 Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, when Team Canada didn’t capture one until 10 days into the Games.
Alpine skier Kathy Kreiner seized the only gold medal by a Canadian at Innsbruck. It was the same medal Greene won eight years before.
There are only two other times when Canada took that same amount of time to top the podium. That happened on Day 10 of the Lake Placid Games in 1932 — for men’s ice hockey — and in Innsbruck in 1964, when Canada competed in the Olympic bobsleigh event for the first time.
In 1964, Vic Emery, John Emery, Peter Kirby, and Douglas Anakin pulled off what some call the biggest upset in Olympic bobsleigh history, and the four-man crew produced Canada’s only gold medal at the Games.
Then there are the Winter Games where the gold medal eluded Canada throughout the entirety of the sporting event:
- 1988 Calgary.
- 1980 Lake Placid.
- 1972 Sapporo.
- 1956 Cortina d’Ampezzo.
- 1936 Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
Archives4:46Canadian playboy bobsleigh team grab gold – Innsbruck, 1964
Peter Kirby, Douglas Anakin and Vic and John Emery stage a huge upset in the four-man bobsleigh event.
Source link
