BEIJING, China – For the first time since the start of the Beijing Olympics, Canada has had two straight days with medals. Another first, Thursday: an athlete from the country touched the podium for the second time.

This latest feat goes to Ottawa’s Isabelle Weidemann, silver medalist in the 5,000 meter event in long track speed skating, five days after her bronze medal in the 3,000 meter.

“I’m so excited. I am overjoyed. I thought winning a medal earlier this week was the pinnacle. So this is really exciting. I was hoping the 3,000 meters wasn’t a fluke,” Weidemann said.

Weidemann’s feat capped off a great day for the Canadian delegation, which picked up three more medals. The country now has 12, as many as Norway and one less than Austria, which dominates the overall total.

Canada’s tally reads: one gold, four silver and seven bronze.

Shortly before Weidemann, the efforts of Marion Thénault, Miha Fontaine and Lewis Irving had won the country a bronze medal in the mixed team jumping competition in freestyle skiing, a discipline presented for the very first time at the Games. Olympics.

Earlier in the day, Eliot Grondin had won the silver medal in the snowboard cross final, and James Crawford had won bronze in the alpine combined.

The good news in the Canadian camp was not limited to medals. The country’s delegation learned in particular that Claude Julien, who had not been able to go to China because of a rib injury, finally got the green light and will join the men’s hockey team.

The news was confirmed hours before Canada won their inaugural match in Group A, 5-1 against Germany.

In curling, Canada had a perfect day following wins by Brad Gushue’s men’s foursome 6-5 over Norway and Jennifer Jones’ women’s team 12-7 over South Korea.

Spectacular race

Failing to reach the top step of the podium during the final round, Grondin displayed all his talent from the beginning to the end of the competition.

He dominated every race until the snowboard cross final in Zhangjiakou, where photo-finishes gave him the silver medal.

Austrian Alessandro Haemmerle crossed the finish line 0.02 seconds before the Beauceron in a mad dash, and won the gold medal. The Italian Omar Visintin completed the podium.

Grondin, who finished first in the preliminaries, found himself second for the first time of the day during the final stage.

He followed Haemmerle from one end of the Final to the other until the very end where he dived to try to obtain a few extra hundredths of a second. A few more were missing.

“I knew I was going to have the money, but I gave everything I had,” said the 20-year-old Quebecer.

In alpine skiing, Crawford finished with a cumulative time of 2:32.11 minutes, 68 hundredths of a second behind the winner, Austrian Johannes Strolz.

Crawford gave Canada a first medal in the alpine combined after placing second in the downhill and seventh in the slalom.

Thus, Crawford got his hands on an Olympic medal before reaching the podium in the World Cup.

“I had been hoping for a World Cup podium for a long time. I continually had the feeling that I was getting closer to it and that I could get there, and that if I kept doing what I was doing, it was going to happen. Today, it finally came to fruition.”

Broderick Thompson of British Columbia finished eighth overall, just ahead of compatriot Brodie Seger.

Earlier, Elizabeth Hosking crashed on her final snowboarding halfpipe run, missing her chance for a podium finish in the final.

Hosking, of Longueuil, tallied 79.25 points to finish the competition in sixth place. A great progression for the one who took 19th place at the Pyeongchang Games in 2018.

The other Canadian in the running, Brooke D’Hondt, 16, finished 10th in her first-ever Olympic Games with a score of 66.75. A clear improvement from his 18th place at the world championships in 2021.

Also Thursday, Canadian Keegan Messing finished 11th in the men’s individual figure skating competition with a total of 265.61 points.

He scored 172.37 points in the free program which was contested on Thursday. Two days ago, he had collected a score of 93.24 points, which placed him in 9th provisional place.

Messing is the only Canadian to have competed in the event.

In the team relay, in the luge, the Canadian delegation which brought together Trinity Ellis, Reid Watts, Tristan Walker and Justin Snith finished in sixth place with a total time of three minutes 5.235 seconds, just under two seconds from the Germany, who won gold.

In cross-country skiing, in the women’s 10km classic, Dahria Beatty was the best Canadian with an 18th place in 30:00.2.