Canada finishes with fewest gold medals at Winter Olympics in 28 years

Feb 20 2022, 6:32 pm

Canada had plenty of medals to celebrate at the Beijing Winter Olympics, but less than one in five of them were gold.

Canada finished the Games with four of its 26 medals being gold, its lowest podium-topping count at a Winter Olympics since the 1994 Games in Lillehammer, Norway.

Max Parrot (slopestyle snowboarding) was Canada’s lone solo gold medallist, while three teams: women’s speed skating team pursuit, men’s 5000m short track relay, and women’s hockey rounded out the other three.

It’s a weird Olympics to evaluate from a medal standpoint: Canada finished with a tie for its second best-ever medal count at a winter Games, finishing with the same total from the Vancouver 2010 Olympics.

But having won at least six gold medals in every Games since 1998, there was a definite lack of the Olympics’ biggest prize coming home to Canada.

Canada went one for five on becoming champion in its marquee team events, winning gold in women’s hockey, but failing to secure top spot in men’s hockey, and any of men’s, women’s, or mixed doubles curling.

In fact, they managed just one other medal in those four events, with Canada’s men’s curling team picking up a bronze medal.

Part of the lower gold count can be attributed to the natural waves of Olympic cycles: a few marquee Canadians, such as Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir who had won gold in 2010 and 2018, didn’t return in ice dancing.

There were a few close calls that could’ve flipped the tide: 2018 moguls champion Mikael Kingsbury finished second by less than a point, while Éliot Grondin and Marielle Thompson both finished second in a race to the finish in snowboard- and ski cross.

Kaillie Humphries won gold in women’s monobob for the USA after previously competing for Canada and transferring countries following abuse allegations against her former coach.

One glaring omission from the Games was the lack of NHL players for a second straight Olympics, where Canada missed the men’s hockey podium this year after winning bronze in 2018.

But that didn’t stop them from having a strong Games four years ago.

Canada won eleven gold medals at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in 2018: four in freestyle skiing, two in figure skating, and one each in curling (mixed doubles), snowboarding, bobsleigh, and each of short track and long track speed skating.

Canada actually didn’t win a single figure skating medal at the 2022 Olympics, its worst performance since 1980 in a typically strong sport.

Adam LaskarisAdam Laskaris

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