Canada won two Olympic medals after coach hid “lucky loonie” on snowboarding course

Whenever Canada needs a bit of good fortune at the Olympic Games, you can count on a lucky loonie to come through.

The tradition was started in 2002 at the Salt Lake City Olympics when Canadian icemaker Trent Evans snuck a loonie underneath centre ice at Utah’s E Center when needing a marker for the faceoff dot.

Evans left the loonie there as a good luck charm for the Canadians, and it worked beautifully, with Canada winning gold in both men’s and women’s hockey for the first time.

Today, Canadian snowboarders Max Parrot and Mark McMorris won the gold and silver medals at the Beijing Winter Olympics in slopestyle after coach Chris Witwicki hid a “lucky loonie” on the snowboarding course.

LUCKY LOONIE 🚨

🇨🇦 Coach Chris Witwicki placed a loonie in the snow of the first feature at #Beijing2022

THEN Canada went on to win TWO medals in the men's slopestyle final 😲 Max Parrot🥇 Mark McMorris🥉 pic.twitter.com/v0EvexwMC6

— CBC Olympics (@CBCOlympics) February 7, 2022

Witwicki is far from the first to replicate Evans’ famous move, though.

A 2016 story from CBC‘s Haydn Watters documented several other cases of Canadians burying coins for good luck charms: in the pool, beach volleyball courts, and golf greens at the Rio 2016 Olympics, as well as three different basketball courts at various Summer Paralympic Games since then.

There might never be another lucky coin with the same prestige as the first one, but with 13 days of the Olympics left, keep your eyes out for the next one.