Canadian lugers Alex Gough and Sam Edney watch teammates Tristan Walker and Justin Snith on a monitor during the team luge event at the Olympic Sliding Centre during the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympic Games on Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018.JONATHAN HAYWARD
Alex Gough capped the Winter Olympics with two medals and a splint on her right middle finger.
The 30-year-old's bronze in women's luge was Canada's first in the sport.
Gough, Sam Edney and the doubles team of Tristan Walker and Justin Snith added to the record books with a relay team silver in luge's finale Thursday in Pyeongchang.
In the heat of competition during the relay, Gough's equipment malfunction in the start hut produced a post-race souvenir of a different sort.
After zipping up her left race bootie, the Calgary racer moved to her right only to feel the zipper on the left give way. That had never happened to her in her 15 years of sliding for Canada.
In a sport where aerodynamics matter, it was no small problem.
"It bleeds time, but I was just 'All right, can't do anything about it now,"' Gough explained Friday at a news conference. "I'm stuck with it for the run. Gotta just go down and not worry about it."
In a hurry after punching the relay pad and crossing the finish line to watch her teammates race, she didn't want to waste time fiddling with her wayward left boot.
"I get to the bottom and they're really uncomfortable so I just want out of them and I can't get out of it, so I just ripped the zipper open as soon as I got off the ice," she said.
"Five minutes later, as the adrenaline started to wear off, I realized that actually really hurt."
So in addition to receiving a silver medal along with her teammates at the medals plaza Friday night, Gough expected to have X-rays on a finger she suspected might be broken.
Walker, from Cochrane, Alta., and Calgary's Snith had family mementoes with them on their trip down the track in the relay.
Walker, 26, tucked his grandfather's RCAF wings into the sleeve of his suit.
"They've been with me on every single Olympic run that I've taken and now they've been with me on my medal run," he said.
Snith, 26, slid with a toonie in his boot.
"We got a care package sent to us by our family. These packages were waiting for us on our beds when we got into the Olympic village," Snith said.
"My mom happened to send me a toonie with a note attached 'Here is your lucky toonie. Do with it as you wish.'
"I didn't (take it) in the doubles race and the doubles race didn't quite turn out how we would have hoped, so I put it in the bootie and it was enough I guess."
The relay marked the final race for Edney, who finished a Canadian-best sixth in men's singles.
He and Gough both four-time Olympians, they were on the national luge team when it didn't travel with a first aid kit, never mind a physiotherapist.
Luge Canada hiring Wolfgang Staudinger as head coach in 2007 was a turning point for the team. He came from a German program that dominates the sport.
After finishing fourth three times in 2014 in women's singles, doubles and the relay, the lugers' breakout performances in Pyeongchang felt especially sweet for them.
"It really shows this program has come to a level now that we're able to compete with the best in the world on every stage, not just World Cups, not just world championships, but at the Olympics and that's a big moment for us," Edney said.
"I feel we've put luge on the radar now. It's an amazing sport that Canadians across the country get to participate in on the toboggan hill at the end of their street.
"We've now shown where you can go with it."