Day 14: Canada Wins!

Today was a pretty exciting day. Stacey had her day off, Lisa worked at the COH in the morning and Doug in the evening. Mikaela was at the MPC in the morning. The MPC was a pretty exciting place to be. All the media was stopping by the COC office to take a peek and catch up with the staff. Word also spread about the Canadian backpack and mitts that were being given to Canadian media so there were quite a few people stopping by to collect theirs. It is also well known around the MPC that Canada has the best snacks. So dropping by for a quick caramilk isn't unusual. Throughout the morning we were gearing up for the press conference for slopestyle medalists Dara and Kim. There are a lot of little things that need to be arranged for the press conference to go smoothly and it is the COC that is responsible to getting everything set up and ready.

After work Mikaela met with Stacey and headed to the women's hockey Canada vs USA hockey game! At home, Stacey and Mikaela both intern with the commonwealth games and one of Stacey's contacts happens to be in Sochi and invited us to attend! We were almost late for the game because everyone kept stopping us for pictures. We had our flag capes on and everyone wanted to take a picture with us.  The game was off to a bit of a slow start for Canada but they sure did pick it up in the third and came out on top. It was a different atmosphere watching a game at the Olympics and in Russia. The arena was mainly packed with Canadians and Americans but the Russians that filled in between were very entertained. They cheered at everything! No matter what team they cheered as loud as possible to every goal. Except for the little boy who sat behind us and cheered CA-NA-DA! the whole game. We gave him a couple Canadian flag stickers to keep him on our side. There were also a lot of explanations throughout the game. After any penalty was called, they would post the definition of the penalty on there big screens in both English and Russian, just in case you needed a refresher. We also saw an unassisted Canadian goal have two assists added minutes later... Only in Russia!

If we thought it was bad for pictures before the game we were shocked at after. Word must have spread that Canada won and even more people were cheering with us and asking for pictures. We almost debated running out of the park to avoid being the 'rude' Canadians who said no to a picture!  On the way out of the park we met the doctor for CBC who was very interesting to speak with. He knew so much about all the sports and because he is responsible for keeping everyone healthy, they all feel he needs to be rewarded with free tickets to events! Is it too late to apply to med school?

We also won another silver medal in long track speed skating. Congrats to Denny Morrison for the win. And we are proud to be Canadian with the story of how he won. He couldn't have done it without Gilmore Junio giving up his place. And now comes the movement to make Gilmore closing ceremonies flag bearer!