Sochi Day 9 Preview: A Big Day! Snowboard Cross, Men’s Hockey, Ice Dancing and Bobsleigh!

Day 9 Preview! It’s going to be a BIG day; 11 events with Canadians in them! Look it’s Saturday night/Sunday morning guys so try to watch some of this live! If you want to see a possible medal, stay up late to watch Snowboard Cross, otherwise wake up in time to watch Figure Skating and Men’s Hockey. Here’s how the day looks!

Big (Non-Medal) Events
-7:00am: Ice Dancing – Short Dance. We have 3 pairs skating, Alexandra Paul & Mitchell Islam, Kaitlyn Weaver & Andrew Poje and the defending Gold Medalists Tessa Virtue & Scott Moir. They skate 12th, 23rd and 18th respectively. Virtue/Moir are looking to repeat but watch out for Silver Medalists Meryl Davis and Charlie White from the US! 18 of last 20 big international competitions have been won by either David/White or Virtue/Moir. It’s going to be a BATTLE!
Oh and this battle is only made more dramatic by word of a BIG scandal brewing. Rumour has it the Americans & Russians are trying to keep Virtue/Moir from winning Gold! See the link http://olympics.cbc.ca/videos/video/figure-skating-scandal-brewing-sochi.html
-9:00am: Men’s Hockey (2-0) vs FIN (2-0). A battle of titans! Finland beat AUT 8-4 and NOR 6-1; we beat them 3-1 and 6-0. This will be our first real test in the Olympics. For as long as I can remember, it’s always been Finland and Canada, along with the US and Sweden, that are always the medalists so watch this game!

Possible Medals!
-11pm/115/130/140am: Women’s Snowboard Cross. The defending Olympic Champion Maëlle Ricker is back and a real contender, though dealing with recent injuries. However Canada also has 2x Olympian Dominique Maltais, who currently leads the overall World Cup snowboard cross standings! We could possibly see 2 medals tonight! Worth staying up to watch!
-6:00am: Women’s 1500m Speed Skating: Brianne Tutt, Kali Christ, Christine Nesbitt, Brittany Schussler are all skating tonight for us. They’ve been shaky as of late but hopefully after watching Denny Morrison‘s skates lately, they might be inspired!

Other Medal Hopefuls
-10:00pm: Men’s Super G – Erik Guay is our best bet in this event. He was 10th in the downhill on Day 2, Jan Hudec was 21st, Manuel Osborne-Paradis was 25th. Morgan Pridy, from the Super Combined, will also be joining them.
-2:00am: Men’s Cross-Country Relay: Len Valjas, Jesse Cockney, Ivan Babikov & Graeme Killick will team up against a very tough opposition. Good luck boys!
-7:00am: Men’s 15km Mass Start Biathlon: Nathan Smith, Brendan Green & Jean-Philippe Le Guellec are at it again.

Qualifiers
-9:00pm: Our Men’s Curling team (5-2), which has won it’s last 4 matches takes on Team USA (2-4)
-2:00am: Our unbeaten Women’s Curling team (7-0) takes on the USA (1-6)
-7:00am: The final match of our Men’s Curling team is against the dominant Team China (6-1)… Yeah, I had NO idea China knew how to curl!
-8:15&9:50am: Bobsleigh!! Finally! Two-Man Bobsled Runs 1 & 2 are first and we have 3 teams in the hunt! Canada 1 = Lyndon Rush/Lascelles Brown, Canada 2 = Chris Spring/Jesse Lumsden, Canada 3 = Justin Kripps/Bryan Barnett. All 3 teams are Medal threats but the field is deep. It would be so crazy though if we could get at least 1 team onto the podium, the potential is there! Also, if you didn’t here about it, Justin’s website got banned by Russia for being “gay” lol! http://olympics.cbc.ca/news/article/bobsledder-justin-kripp-website-banned-russia.html