Olympics: Rochette brings some passion back to Games

Published on Friday 26 February 2010 09:08

WHEN is a bronze worth as much as a gold? When it's worn by Joannie Rochette.

Courage and bravery are words that have been too liberally bandied around at these Olympics but give me a slight but resilient figure skater with an iron will over a stoked or bummed snowboarder any day.

Every Olympian has a tale to tell, with stories about triumph over adversity commonplace, but Canadian Rochette stands to scrutiny with them all and just four days after her mother Therese suddenly passed away, she produced a performance that will go down in the history of these storied Games.

Lying third after a flawless short program, Rochette took to the ice knowing that the judges would afford no marks for sympathy in her free skate. And for exactly four minutes and seven seconds, the Pacific Coliseum collectively held its breath and willed her through every lutz, axel, salchow and step sequence of the most public tribute possible to her mother.

The layman might initially struggle to take to a sport where a degree in advanced mathematics is required to understand its scoring but it would be difficult to find anyone not moved by this performance or cheered by its result.

It wasn't perfect but you could forgive Rochette for that – and it didn't make it any less brilliant anyway. When she was done, concluding her routine with a blur of a flying sit spin, grief finally started to overwhelm her and the tears slowly started to flow. She was not alone, even the jocks in hockey shirts were dabbing their moistened eyes.

The 24-year old was embraced by long-time coach Manon Perron as she waited to receive her marks. Rarely has skating's so-called "kiss and cry" zone been more appropriately named.

In time history books will record Rochette's third place as if it was a sub-plot to the performance of South Korea's Kim Yu-Na, who will earn a reported $1million after taking gold.

Kim dazzled for sure with a routine that was so brilliant it defied superlatives but Rochette proved it maybe was possible to share top billing at the greatest show on earth.

Canada have made so much of "owning the podium" at these Games – it's ironic that this bronze, forged in tragedy, could be their defining moment.

Meanwhile, British team officials were defending their team's performance in Vancouver yesterday. British Olympic Association chief executive Andy Hunt was keen to accentuate the positive, underlining his point with statistics.

But while skeleton gold for Amy Williams represents an improvement on Shelley Rudman's solitary silver in Turin, there have been only seven top-ten performances in Vancouver. That is two fewer than four years ago, with only short track speed skater Jon Eley likely to nudge the figure upwards in the final days before Sunday's closing ceremony. In addition, two of these top tens come in a curling – a sport with only ten teams entered.

"We never set a medal target and we've be pretty consistent with that," he said. "We are delighted with the success in skeleton. One gold is an outstanding achievement for Amy and for British winter sports.

"We have achieved against our objectives. Of course we are hungry and ambitious and we'd love another medal before the end of the Games but we have achieved what we set out to do."

Elsewhere yesterday, Germany's Viktoria Rebensburg captured a shock gold in the women's giant slalom while Great Britain's Chemmy Alcott dropped several places on her first run performance, finishing a distant 27th.

"I felt like I really knocked the door down," said Alcott. "I didn't really make a mistake, I just skied too hard. I'm disappointed because it just didn't happen."

Meanwhile short track speed skater Jon Eley, Britain's last outside chance of a podium place in Vancouver, goes in tonight's short track 500m quarter-finals.

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