BEIJING — Canada won its first ever Olympic medal in ski jumping on Monday with a surprise bronze in the mixed team competition at the Beijing Winter Olympics.
The Canadian team of Alexandria Loutitt, Matthew Soukup, Abigail Strate and Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes placed third with a combined score of 844.6 points.
Slovenia won the gold medal in dominating style with 1,001.5 points, while Russia took silver with 890.3 points.
Toronto's Boyd-Clowes, 30, secured the bronze on Canada's final jump, travelling 101.5 metres and scoring 128.1 points. Â
The four-time Olympian described the medal as "a huge achievement."
"It's an individual sport, but being up here with these teammates makes it so much better," he said.
It was also moment of redemption for 18-year-old Loutitt, who was disqualified in the qualifier of the women's normal hill event.Â
"I was crying before out of sadness. I was upset, I was frustrated," she said. Â
"Today it was definitely pride and excitement. It shows how quickly things can change when you put your mind to it."
The mixed team event, which took place at the Zhangjiakou Ski Jump Centre, was making its Olympic debut at the Beijing Games.
Canada had never won an Olympic medal in any ski jumping discipline.
However, the athletes have been steadily climbing the rankings despite COVID-19 challenges and being forced to move their training base to Slovenia.Â
Strate had recent a career-high 13th-place World Cup finish, while Loutitt, the team's youngest member at 18, jumped to a career-high 14th place finish.
Boyd-Clowes finished 16th in the men's normal hill final earlier on Sunday, which was his best result prior to the mixed event.
Soukup and Loutitt expressed hope that the medal would lead to greater support for the sport in Canada.
Loutitt noted that both she and Strate had had to move away from home at a young age to train in Europe after the ski jump facilities at Canada Olympic Park in Calgary were closed in 2018
"It kind of shows that even though our sport was struggling and there wasn’t a lot left there we still pursued our passion and our love kind of came through," she said.
Canada's win came after some of the event's traditional powers were disqualified.
Germany, one of the favourites to win, was disqualified after the first round because of an equipment violation by Katharina Althaus, who won silver for the second straight Olympics on Saturday.
Japan, with and star Sara Takanashi, finished fourth in the 10-nation field after Takanashi had a jump disqualified. Kobayashi won on the normal hill on Sunday, becoming the first Japanese jumper to finish first in the event since Yukio Kasaya in 1972.
Men have been at the since the first one in 1924. Women did not have access to the sport at the Olympics until 2014.
The International Ski Federation hosted the first mixed team event in 2012, when Takanashi was part of the winning team, and it has been at the World Cup four times over the last decade.
Norway was the only nation that earned a spot on the podium in each of the previous four mixed team World Cup events, but that streak was snapped with an eighth-place finish.
While the women are finished jumping in China, the men have two more opportunities with the large hill in an individual event Saturday and team competition next Monday.
— With files from The Associated Press
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 7, 2022.
The Canadian Press
