28.3°C Mainly Sunny 
We all know that Canada is the only country to host the summer and winter Olympics and not win a gold medal. Rest assured there is no way that’s going to happen in 2010 as it did in 1976 and 1988.
At the Calgary Olympics women’s hockey had yet to be included in the games. Now with just two teams (U.S. and Canada) in serious contention for the gold, women’s hockey is a high percentage bet for Canada. On the men’s side, back in ’88, NHL players were not playing in the Olympics, giving a huge edge to the Soviet Union, who won gold with a professional military team.
Is it possible that Canada’s men’s and women’s teams will both fail to win gold? It could happen, but I think we can safely expect at least one hockey gold in February.
However, the event schedule for the Games suggests we won’t be counting on our hockey players to be the first to win at home. Long before the final hockey games our skiers, riders, sliders and skaters will have the chance to produce that magic first golden moment.
The first with a chance at history will be the men’s speed skiers as the downhill is set to run on the first morning of the Games. Here we have the red hot Manny Osborne-Paradis who’s got a super G victory and downhill gold and silver this season and he’s in third place in the downhill standings. Osborne-Paradis is also a Whistler Mountain Ski Club grad and he knows the Dave Murray track like the back of his hand.
If Manny and fellow skiers Robbie Dixon and Eric Guay leave the door open, expect mogul skier Jennifer Heil to put an end to Canada’s golden futility. Just hours after the downhill race, Heil will look to defend her Olympic gold from Torino on the slopes of Cypress. Heil is leading the freestyle moguls standings and she’s won the last four World Cups. The next day it’s the men’s moguls, where expectations will be huge for last year’s World Cup moguls title winner Alexandre Bilodeau. He finished on the podium in eight of the nine World Cup events in ’09, including winning the last five events of the season.
Speed skaters will also have their crack at erasing the curse of Montreal and Calgary as there are several gold-medal events in the first couple of days of competition. But if the door is still open to be the first gold medal winner, Squamish’s Maëlle Ricker will hit the snowboard cross track on Day 4 of the Games riding a hot board and leading the World Cup standings.
After that the pace of golden possibilities starts to pick up as the skeleton sliders hit the Whistler track lead by World Cup leader Mellisa Hollingsworth. Over on Cypress, expectations are equally golden for Canada’s ski cross team as that sport makes its Olympic debut.
With so many Canadian athletes winning on the World Cup tours and with Canada’s expertise in team sports like hockey and curling, the question isn’t will we win, but rather who will be the first to win gold?
