A hard-on for Bronze

My friend Patsy says she has a hard-on for bronze. When she plays in volleyball tournaments, she crazily hopes her team finishes in third place so she can bring home one of her favourite medals. I've played on plenty of teams with Patsy, and the rest of us are gunnin' for gold while she's content to add another piece of bronze to her family jewels.

Sometimes I think Canada is like Patsy. Aside from Salt Lake City, where we totalled 7 golds among our 17 total medals, we tend to mine for bronze in the Olympics, Commonwealth Games, Pan-Am Games, etc. Seems as if Torino is no exception. Don't get me wrong -- I'm stoked we keep taking medals left, right and centre! I just hope that we get someone else at the top of the podium to join wee Jennifer, our moguls champion.

After my update yesterday, Jeffrey Buttle skated a strong free to take the -- you guessed it -- bronze medal in men's Figure Skating. I didn't get to see him or any of the boys skate, of course (damn my job -- when will I learn to take all my holidays during the Olympics?!), but a bronze medal should answer some of his critics (hello Joubert and Sandhu -- weren't you finishing 6th and 13th, respectively? hmmmm?) and puts him in the record books as an Olympic medalist. It just kills me that some little kid with a big heart and some great artistry is now an Oly medal winner. Good on ya, mate!

Today, thus far we've won a bronze in women's Snowboard Cross. Dominique Maltais snuck home in 3rd place, but unlucky Maelle Ricker (from Whistler, no less), the leading qualifier and favourite for gold, took a nasty tumble and finished out of the medals in 4th. In fact, she was lifted from the hill by medics, but hopefully she's not seriously injured. Bummer, dude.

So our total creeps to 9 medals. We're 5th in the medal standings in overall medals, but way down the list in the generally-accepted ranking criteria of golds. And that's why we really need a few more golds -- if we end up with only one gold, we could win 20 medals overall but still be considered waaaaaaay low in the standings. Plus we need to get over our hard-on for bronze.

Go Canadian Olympians! Continue to make us proud!