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Island athletes played role in reaching Canada's Olympic medal milestone

Vancouver Island athletes have had a hand in many of Canada's Olympic medals in winter sports, from ice hockey to curling to snowboarding.
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Cassie Sharpe is the reigning Olympic champion in women's ski halfpipe. FREESTYLE CANADA

Canada’s first Beijing 2022 medal, Isabelle Weidemann’s bronze Saturday in women’s 3,000-metre long-track speedskating, was a milestone.

It was the 200th Canadian medal won all-time in the Olympic Winter Games. It was actually Canada’s 201st medal in winter sports, but the first was won at the 1920 Antwerp Summer Olympics in ice-hockey, four years before the first Winter Games in 1924 at Chamonix, France.

Although a heavy contributor to Canada’s collection of Summer Olympics medals, thanks in part to it being one of the few places in the country where athletes can train outdoors year-round, it might surprise people that the Island has also played a role in those medals, now numbering more than 200 thanks to Mikaël Kingsbury’s moguls silver later in the day Saturday.

The connection actually pre-dates Chamonix, at those 1920 Antwerp Games, where Frank Frederickson helped lead Canada to hockey gold five years before leading the Victoria Cougars to the 1925 Stanley Cup championship.

That legacy was added to with Dallas Stars captain Jamie Benn of Central Saanich winning gold with Canada in hockey at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, the last time NHL players competed.

NHLer-to-be Kent Manderville of Victoria, a forward, helped carry Canada to the silver medal in the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville. But the Czech goaltending heroics of Dominik Hasek in the semifinals relegated Canada and forward Rod Brind’Amour of Campbell River to heartbreak at Nagano in 1998. Forward Russ Courtnall of Victoria also has a tough fourth-place finish with Canada from 1984 in Sarajevo.

Victor Kraatz’s elegantly-executed career earned for him an arena named in his honour in Parksville, where his formative skating years took place. Kraatz and Shae-Lynn Bourne became the first North Americans to win the world ice-dance title in 2003 and added a world championship silver medal and four bronzes. But the Olympics proved a podium too far and just eluded them with fourth-place finishes at Nagano in 1998 and Salt Lake City in 2002.

From Zamboni ice to the pebbled ice, Julie Skinner of Victoria won curling bronze at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.

A generation that grew up on Mount Washington began coming into its own at the Winter Olympics, pioneered by skier Allison Forsyth of Nanaimo and snowboarder Spencer O’Brien of Courtenay, and dramatically capped by Cassie Sharpe of Comox winning gold in women’s ski half-pipe at Pyeongchang in 2018.

Sharpe, overcoming a year of injury followed by surgery, will be looking to defend her Olympic title Feb. 17-18. She is joined in the Beijing Olympics by her Comox freestyle snowboarding brother Darcy Sharpe competing Feb. 14-15, Pyeongchang fifth-place freestyle skier Teal Harle of Campbell River competing Feb. 14-15, blueliner Micah Zandee-Hart of Saanichton on the undefeated Canadian women’s hockey team and forward Adam Cracknell of Victoria on the men’s hockey team, which opens Thursday against Germany.

Cracknell and the NHL-less Canadian team will also meet, in group play, the host China team featuring quicksilver former Victoria Grizzlies forward Eddie Yan and former Cowichan Valley Capitals defenceman Zimeng (Simon) Chen, son of Capitals owner Ray Zhang.

Perhaps fittingly, one of the Island’s greatest Winter Olympics moments was delivered by a Summer Olympian when two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash of Victoria was selected to light the cauldron for his home-province 2010 Vancouver Games with Wayne Gretzky, Nancy Greene Raine and Catriona Le May Doan. It capped the country-wide torch relay that began on the Legislature lawns with the first torch bearers being Victoria Summer Olympic legends Simon Whitfield and Silken Laumann.

cdheensaw@timescolonist.com