Canada’s Meryeta O’Dine wins bronze in snowboard cross at Beijing Olympics

Canada’s Meryeta O’Dine won the bronze medal in her Olympic debut at the Beijing Winter Games in women’s snowboard cross Wednesday.

The 24-year-old from Prince George, B.C., held off Australia’s Belle Brockhoff in the big final to claim a place on the podium.

It marks Canada’s first women’s snowboard cross medal since the 2014 Games in Sochi.

“You have to play it patient and really line it up in places that you know that you’re going to pass, and there are some places that I tried to run out a pass and there ended up being either no space or I slowed myself down,” O’Dine said of the tightly-contested final.

Lindsay Jacobellis of the United States won her first gold medal in five Olympic Games, in a redemption story after winning an upset silver at the 2006 Games in Torino and missing out on a medal in every subsequent Olympics until Beijing.

France’s Chloe Trespeuch took the silver medal.

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Fellow Canadian Tess Critchlow nearly joined O’Dine in the final but placed third in the semifinal round, sending her to the small final where she finished second for a sixth-place overall rank.

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Zoe Bergermann and Audrey McManiman, also of Canada, made it to the quarterfinals in the same event but failed to make it into the top two in their heats, ending their runs.

O’Dine made Canada’s team for the 2018 Pyeongchang Games but suffered a concussion two days before her event.

“Coming out of the other side I’ve found a really great system and community that works for me,” O’Dine said. “My friends and my family have been just absolutely nothing but supportive of me and my mission.”

She had her career best World Cup season just prior to Pyeongchang in 2017-18, making one big final and three small finals and finishing 11th in the snowboard cross standings.

Jacobellis’ gold was a redemption story for the U.S. rider. She was within metres of winning the snowboard cross event in 2006 — the first time it was included in the Games — when she threw in a showboating trick trying to grab her board, only to fall and get overtaken at the line.

O’Dine’s medal win is Canada’s seventh of the 2022 Games.

–With files from the Canadian Press