Olympics Day 4: No medals for Canada so far despite some historic efforts

Coming off a four-medal day on Monday that included Max Parrot’s slopestyle snowboard gold and a bronze in, of all things, ski jumping, Canada came up short on a couple of early medal opportunities Tuesday.

Canada’s Megan Oldham finishes fourth in freestyle ski big air at Olympics

Canada’s Megan Oldham just missed the podium, finishing fourth in the women’s freestyle ski big air event on Tuesday at the Beijing Olympics.

It marked Canada’s fifth fourth-place finish at the Olympics, keeping the country’s medal total at six on Day 4.

Oldham, a 20-year-old from Parry Sound, Ont., won the qualifier for the new Olympic event on Monday.

Fellow Canadian Olivia Asselin finished eighth in the final.

China’s Eileen Gu, one of the host country’s biggest stars at the Games, won gold with the top score of the day on her final run — each athlete gets three attempts and the top two scores count. Tess Ledeux of France was second and Mathilde Gremaud of Switzerland was third.

Oldham won silver in big air the last two years at the X Games.

The Canadian was fourth in big air last year at the world championship.

Canada’s Keegan Messing ninth in Olympic short program, qualifies for free skate

Finally in Beijing after flying across the planet, Canada’s Keegan Messing qualified for the free skate at the Beijing Olympics on Tuesday.

The Canadian champion scored 93.24 in the short program to INXS’ Never Tear Us Apart. Messing finished ninth and will be one of the 24 skaters in the free skate on Thursday .

American Nathan Chen ranked first of the short program with a world-record score of 113.97 to the sound of Charles Aznavour’s La Boheme. Chen has his eyes set on Olympic gold after two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan dropped to eighth with a 95.15 having missed his opening quad salchow.

Messing arrived in Beijing less than 48 hours before the start of the competition and could only fit a single practice on Monday morning.

The 30-year-old needed to fulfil a fourth negative COVID test in Montreal before getting the green light to fly to Milan and finally land in China. The delay made him miss the team event.

“I pulled out my phone and seeing my pictures with full beard and I was like ‘Oh, hey I forgot to shave.’ I didn’t even have time to shave since arriving here in Beijing to hop on the ice for first practice,” Messing told CBC. “It sure was a whirlwind.”

Back in 2018, Messing ranked 12th of the men’s single skating event at his first Olympic Games in Pyeongchang.

Gow ties Canadian record with fifth-place Olympic biathlon finish

Scott Gow tied a Canadian record for best Olympic finish by a male Canadian biathlete with his fifth-place showing in the 20-kilometre event on Tuesday at the Beijing Games.

The Calgary native matched the fifth-place showing from Jean-Philippe Le Guellec in the 10 km event at the 2014 Sochi Games.

Gow had one shooting penalty and finished 1:05 behind winner Quentin Fillion Maillet of France.

Anton Smolski of Belarus took silver, while Johannes Thingnes Boe of Norway grabbed the bronze.

Gow finished 14th at this event in his Olympic debut four years ago in Pyeongchang.

Gow’s brother, Christian, finished 24th on Tuesday.