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Originally Posted by IceMan xMVPx
I don't disagree with anything Hunter said. The goal was to win 35 medals and they're way off that pace. It's disconcerning to a lot of Canadians when they watch Britt Janyk and Manny Osbourne Paradis, who race on Whistler everyday, barely crack the top 10. I know Janyk finished 6th but her reaction was like she won a medal, saying that she was so proud of her performance.
Another great point that Hunter made was that in order for Canada to obtain their 30+ medals, they need to get more than 1 Canadian on the podium. There have been many missed opportunities for Canada to get 2 athletes on the podium which would obviously increase their chances of winning the medal count. Look at the US yesterday, 3 events in which 6 Americans won medals and that catapulted them to the top of the medal standings.
I enjoy listening to Jim Hunter as he gives his listeners an in depth insight as to what is going on in the minds of Olympic athletes and what they need to do in order for them to win a medal. I don't disagree with what he said but it is still early and there are still a lot of medals to be won by Canadians.
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It's hard to get two Canadians on the podium when thus far we've only had a handful of Canadian medal hopefuls. What events exactly should Canada have double-medaled? Maybe women's 1000m long track speed skating, but it's hard to get up in arms over .06 seconds separating Groves from her second bronze.
The US might be up in medals now, but they were expected to be. Canada is expected to clean up in the last 4-5 days of competition. Here's an awesome link (by Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus fame) that took the predictions from major sports news sources and averaged them out to produce a projected medal total for each country:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/...ons-day-6.html
As you can see, the predictions say we're 1 medal behind where we should be right now, but still are on pace for 31-32 medals. The charts are updated daily so it's interesting to check it every day and really see how the country is doing.
People were saying the exact same stuff about Beijing in week one and we ended up doing pretty well in the end.