Canada wins first ever Olympic ski jumping medal in debut of mixed team event
The quartet of Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes, Alexandria Loutitt, Matthew Soukup and Abigail Strate have made history at Beijing 2022, winning the bronze medal in the Olympic debut of the mixed team event.
Canada had never before won an Olympic medal in ski jumping. It is the first Olympic ski jumping medal for North America since the first Olympic Winter Games at Chamonix 1924.
Things had started to look promising during the first round, when Canada finished fourth behind Slovenia, Norway and ROC. Several of the pre-event favourites, such as Japan, Austria and Germany, were dealt blows when they had skiers disqualified for suit violations. That meant they only counted three scores instead of four.
In the final, 18-year-old Loutitt was the first to go for Canada. She flew 90 metres and scored 101.4 points. She was followed by Soukup, another Olympic rookie, who jumped 89 metres and scored 97.1 points. Next up was 20-year-old Strate, who went 91.5 metres for 102.6 points.
That left it to the veteran Boyd-Clowes to clinch the spot on the podium. In his fourth Olympic appearance, he covered 101.5 metres and earned 128.1 points to give Canada an overall total for the two rounds of 844.6 points. That was enough to hold off Japan and put the Canadians on the podium alongside gold medallist Slovenia (1001.5) and silver medallist ROC (890.3). Norway fell back to eighth place after two of its jumpers were disqualified for suit violations.
