A look at Team Canada’s performance at the Sochi Olympics

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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Team Canada may have fallen short of its goal for gold at the Winter Olympics, but there are aren’t many complaints after victories from both the men’s and women’s hockey teams in Sochi.

Our athletes walked away with a considerable amount of medals — 25 in all — which was good enough for fourth in total medals and third when it comes to gold. That is down slightly from 2010 and the first time Canada has fallen backward in the medal count at a Winter Games since Lake Placid in 1980.

“We didn’t quite hit those lofty expectations,” says Jonathon Gatehouse, in Sochi for Maclean’s Magazine. “There had been talk of topping the table, and there were not as many golds overall, but we did win gold in the ones that really count for Canadians.”

Team Canada now has back-to-back wins in men’s hockey for the first time since the NHL entered the Olympics and the women have their fourth-straight hockey gold. But it was the women who really won our hearts, with an edge-of-the-seat victory over the US.

“It was, frankly, a dull game up until the last six minutes of the third period and then the overtime. And then it was about the most exciting thing I’ve ever sit through!” Gatehouse tells News1130.

At the 2010 Games, Canada took a total of 26 medals with a Winter Olympic record-breaking 14 gold. Gatehouse says it’s hard to compare Sochi to Vancouver.

“Vancouver was special — how well Canada did on home soil, the atmosphere, the excitement… I think the Russians experienced the equivalent this time.”

Team Canada also won gold in both men’s and women’s curling (an Olympic first) and we had the first-ever repeat gold medal winners in women’s bobsled.

A Canadian also climbed up onto the alpine skiing podium for the first time in 20 years, thanks to Jan Hudec’s bronze in men’s Super G; it may have helped that he buried a loonie at the finish line.

Sisters Justine and Chloe Dufour-Lapointe took gold and silver in the women’s moguls and Alexandre Bilodeau won back-to-back gold in freestyle moguls.

Team Canada comes home with 10 gold, 10 silver and five bronze.

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