Sledge Hockey The day started great – Gold for McKeever, Gold for Viviane Forest to complete her set (Gold, Silver & Bronze). Not too shabby on a bad leg! Then a third Gold for Wolstencroft. We were positively beaming, the mood was upbeat, and we headed out to the hockey semi-final against Japan.

We scored first. Our guys were playing well, but not quite on target. Lots of shots missed the goal in the first period. 1-0 going into the first intermission. It was the same story in the second period although the shots were more accurate with no reward as the Japanese goalie was having a great day. Nothing to fear, until a poor pass in the defensive zone, right onto the stick of the Japanese forward who scored an easy goal. 1-1 going into the second intermission and stress levels drastically increased, mine in particular as my wife phoned me , upset that our teenage daughter had gone missing.

I didn’t consider it a big deal. “Missing” in this case meant “not being at the agreed upon meeting place” – it probably happens to the parents of teenagers thousands of time a day in Toronto alone.

As it turns out, my daughter was stuck on a cliff. She followed some extreme snowboarder tracks and decided not to jump fifty feet off a rock face, but she didn’t know the safe path down, so she sat down and asked someone below to send some help. It’s a decent excuse for not being at the rendez-vous point, and good judgment for not making a bad situation worse. Two locals showed her the way down safely.

Unaware of the drama unfolding on Whistler mountain, I returned to my seat. We peppered the net with shots in the third period but the goalie didn’t allow anything by him. We pushed harder with two minutes to go – then came a bad bounce and three Japanese players got a breakaway – no chance for our goalie . Suddenly we were behind with 90 seconds to go. We pulled the goalie out – it didn’t work . The final score was 3-1 Japan. We were devastated. This wasn’t supposed to be a tough game.

We now had to figure out how to change all the Gold Medal match tickets our supporters bought for Bronze Medal match tickets. This would be a long evening for our staff.

I made it up to Whistler and the mood was better here with our flag raised three times that evening (and my daughter in the hotel room – not in hospital with broken bones).

And I realized that I never made it to the biathlon despite teasing you about blind men with guns. So I headed to my archives and pulled a few pictures. The gun is actually a laser rifle (hence the photographer being comfortable with me shooting right at the camera) and the shooter wears headphones. The closer to the target the shooter is, the higher the sound pitch. I actually found that finding the target is the toughest part – there is no sound until the laser is actually hitting the target. Of course, when I did it, I was totally rested and didn’t have a heart rate at 160…

The other picture shows me and Jordan trying a ski sled. It looks easy – it totally isn’t. There was a barely noticeable hill and we just managed to make it up before our muscles quit. Oh yes, Colette Bourgonje won another Bronze today. Good to be in Whistler! Flag going up 4 times, anthem 3 times. That’s sport. You win some and you lose some. My daughter has decided she’s cheering for the Japanese Saturday!
biathlon
ski sled
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