Norwegian Ole Einar Bjoerndalen bids to become the winningest Winter Olympian in history, Swiss skier Didier Cuche seemingly gets better with age and the Canadian men’s ice hockey team faces pressure unlike any other to strike gold in its backyard. A look at some of the top international stories in Vancouver:
Didier Cuche
Alpine, Switzerland
He claimed his first World Cup victory 12 years ago in the famed Hahnenkamm downhill at Kitzbuehel, Austria. He won the Hahnenkamm again this year, at age 35.
In the interim, there were 11 other World Cup wins across three disciplines, 51 other podium appearances, two World Cup downhill titles and a giant slalom title. He won a silver medal in super-G at the 1998 Nagano Olympics and claimed three medals at last year’s world championships — gold in downhill and superG, bronze in giant slalom.
His performance at last year’s worlds, along with continued excellence on the World Cup this year, marks him as a multiple medal threat in Vancouver.
“I don’t really feel like I’m 35, especially with the motivation and fun I have on the course,” Cuche said after finishing second in downhill at Beaver Creek last December. “But I work really hard during the summer, and I worked really hard all those 10-plus years to get where I am now. It’s like an airplane — when it starts, it needs a lot of power, but when it gets in the air, it just cruises. That’s how I feel.”
John Meyer, The Denver Post
Chris Del Bosco </h3
Skicross, Canada
Wake-up calls come in a variety of ways. For Del Bosco, a dual citizen Canadian-American from Avon, his came face down in a ditch, with a broken neck, after a blackout night of binge drinking in 2004. Combine that near-death experience with a positive test for marijuana that stripped the budding Ski Club Vail racing phenomenon of a junior national championship title, along with a two-year suspension from sanctioned competition, and precious few opportunities remained for Del Bosco to hit the snooze button.
Fortunately, the 27-year-old found sobriety around the time he found skicross. And since combining the two in the fall of 2006, Del Bosco has been on a straight-and-narrow track to success.
With a father, a former DU hockey player, from Quebec, Del Bosco got his second shot at ski racing as a Canadian. He finished second in the world rankings last year. He is third in the World Cup this year and has won twice. He also led a Canadian sweep
of men’s skicross competition at the Winter X Games, the final race before Olympic competition at Cypress Mountain outside of Vancouver.
Scott Willoughby, The Denver Post
Torah Bright
Snowboarding, Australia
There isn’t much Bright hasn’t accomplished in the snowboarding world, with the exception of that one nagging issue of an Olympic medal.
Bright, 23, finished fifth at her first Olympics in Turin in 2006.
Since then, she has been perhaps
the sport’s most dominant female
presence. Her technical skills are unmatched. She earned the highest score ever awarded to a female in Winter X superpipe competition (97.66) en route to her third gold medal in 2009.
Two concussions in three days of practice kept her from defending her title this year, when rumors circulated that she might become the first to attempt a double-cork 900 in women’s competition.
Whether or not she breaks out the move for the first time in Vancouver, Bright is the biggest threat to prevent a U.S. women’s sweep — or a repeat gold — at these Olympic Games.
Scott Willoughby, The Denver Post
Ole Einar Bjoerndalen
Biathlon, Norway
Bjoerndalen is already considered the greatest biathlete in history, and in Vancouver he will be chasing Olympic records set by the greatest Winter Olympian of all time, cross country legend Bjoern Daehlie.
Daehlie, another Norwegian, owns the record for medals (12) and gold medals (eight). Bjoerndalen has won nine medals (five gold) and can surpass both of Daehlie’s records this month.
At the Salt Lake Olympics in 2002,
Bjoerndalen became the only biathlete to sweep four gold medals at a single Games. He settled for two silver and a bronze at the 2006 Turin Games, but won the World Cup overall title two of the past three seasons and looks strong again this year.
He also has won 14 world championship gold medals and is the all-time winningest World Cup biathlete.
John Meyer, The Denver Post
Men’s ice hockey team
Canada
If there’s one Olympic gold medal to be won above all others in these Games, Canadians want to make sure it comes in men’s ice hockey.
“There won’t be anybody in stores or on the streets all through Canada when the Olympic team is playing,” television hockey analyst Pierre McGuire said. “If anybody is, you know they’re not Canadian. They’re just visiting.”
Canadians are savvy enough about hockey to know, however, that a gold medal is not automatic. After all,
Sweden took the gold four years ago.
But most pundits believe Canada is the favorite this year, for more reasons than having home-ice advantage.
For starters, Canada has the ageless Martin Brodeur in goal and he’s in the midst of one of his best seasons for
the New Jersey Devils, at age 37.
And there is a star-studded group of forwards, led by Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby, above. Canada executive director Steve Yzerman assembled a young, fast group around Crosby. This Canadian team is not the legacy-oriented, older group of past Olympics. This team will be tough to beat. And if beaten, it will get awfully quiet across Canada.
Adrian Dater, The Denver Post
