Rochette Rochette

Thursday, Day 14.

I hurried over to Thorndog's place to catch the end of the Canada vs. USA women's Gold medal final. Unsurprisingly, Team Canada was winning 2-0 with only 4 minutes to go. They grinded out those last 4 minutes and finished off Team USA in style - with a shutout.

Women pwn. Some sick stat about Canadian women in the past two Olympics - Women have accounted for ~70% of all medals for Canada. Nuts. Good job ladies!!

Funny that the women were given a hard time for drinking beer and smoking stogies on the ice after they were presented their Gold medals.

That makes 8 Gold medals for Canada now (even though they were handed 22 medals alone last night, that still only counts as one) and they still have a good chance a few more. Can't wait!

Joannie Rochette is the big story for Canada today. Slightly overshadowed by our Gold medal win in hockey, Joannie conquered what I will call the toughest task of them all - losing a loved one.

Not only did she perserver and continue to compete in the games only 48 hours after her mom passed away - she won a bronze medal!! So awesome.

I have a new respect for skating now. Individual skating specifically. I still get off on watching people (usually in couples skate) fall and I am not sure why. Maybe it is because of how hard it is to actually do what they do on skates.

I equate it to golf in a way because you are really all alone out there. No team will pick you up and make up for your mistakes or make a save after you gave up the puck. No judge to give you a score better than you deserve because you are French, or whatever.

If you fall you fall. In golf, if you miss a two foot putt for the win, that is all on you. No one else.

It takes a certain mental toughness to rise to the top, one that should not be understated. I commend Joannie for doing what she did, on the stage that she was on with the world looking and waiting for her to screw up. Everyone would have been fine if she had said "I just can't compete"... but she did the opposite. She saw it through to the end and I am sure her mother is looking down on her as proud as can be.

Tomorrow is a big day. The semi finals in men's hockey. We take on Slovaki and that should be the only team that we are thinking about heading into the game. Sure it is easy to forecast a Canada vs. USA rematch. But that will have to wait. Slovaki is good. They have a very good goaltender and two or three snipers that can rip the puck in the net.

Should be a good one!