Torino - Yet Another Medal!

Beckie Scott and partner Sara Renner won the silver medal this morning at Pragellato Plan in the Women's Cross-Country Team Sprint .

Sara actually broke a ski pole during the race, which consists of several laps around a cross-country loop, but managed to have a new pole supplied by a coach after only a few strides. Beckie Scott made up the lost seconds on the next lap.

Update: It turns out that it was a Norwegian coach who came to the rescue with a spare pole for Sara, which was a nice gesture of sportsmanship.

Beckie had finished 6th earlier this week in the 15km pursuit, in which she was the defending gold medalist. You may remember that she actually finished 3rd in the race, but was later bumped up to silver, and then gold (more than a year later), after both Russian women ahead of her were found to have failed doping tests.

Also today, and I am unable to find any confirmation of this yet, I was watching the third training run from San Sicario in the Women's Downhill which goes tomorrow, and I'm pretty sure that the leader was Canadian Kelly Vanderbeek.

The past few days have seen a number of horrific looking crashes at the downhill and luge, including Canadian skier Allison Forsyth who tore a knee ligament and will have to return to Canada for surgery.