Day 15: Gold number 3 and hockey stress

Christine Nesbitt won the 1000m long track speed skating event at last year's World Championship. Could she do it again with this amount of pressure? The Oval's crowd was ready to explode and .....it did when the clock showed a time 0.02 seconds faster when her toe crossed the line. She was in first! Krstina Groves, already a bronze medal winner at these games was skating in the last pair and could have put 2 Canadians on the podium. She came in 4th. What a day at he Oval. At the other end of town one of our women snowboarders made it in the final round in the halfpipe. An event, as we saw yesterday, quite dominated by Americans. Mercedes came in 6th place which is great.

It has been quite quiet on the medical front. I have been lucky to be not very busy as a doctor for our Canadian team. The therapists associated with the teams have been working steadily to maintain the functionality of our athletes.They are the workhorses of the health care provision at these Games. Most of the therapists have been associated with their teams (hockey, freestyle skiing, snowboard, speed skate, etc) for quite some time. They know the athletes and have been caring for them already. It makes it an easy transition when they are in this environment where familiarity is key. Physiotherapists, massage therapists and athletic therapists all manage the fine tuning of the athletes. They see them daily. They are at every practice and every game. They see them when they are back at the Village as well. Training at high intensity to perform at this level creates more than a few aches. It is quite interesting to see the dynamics between athlete and therapist. I had a chance to go to 2 periods of Canada's hockey game this evening. I had to leave to return to the Village as I was covering clinic. What was the point as I knew everyone would either be training, competing in their event....or watching the game! It started well and the crowd was amazing. It became quite stressful at the end and Sydney Crosby, with a look of "I have had enough of this!" scored the only goal on the shootout. This was only a round robin game but you would have thought the gold medal or the Stanley Cup had been won. The crown exploded and cars in the street were honking horns. The whole city is red with people walking to the rink. Everyone is wearing Canada jerseys, painting themselves, wearing crazy outfits. There are a lot of children experiencing these Games. It's an awesome sight.

More coming up. Remember: Canada does better with the sports taking place in the second week!