Vernon athletes graze glory

VERNON – Two Vernon athletes came close to bringing home Olympic medals. 

This morning Justin Dorey, 26, competed in the first ever men's ski half pipe event, after placing first in the qualification round. He was a gold medal hopeful, but crashed in both his Olympic runs. First his skis caught the edge of a wall, causing him to fall, and then he stumbled on his second run, finishing in 12th place overall. Warm temperatures and rain in Sochi meant that much of the half pipe had turned to slush, creating challenging conditions for the contestants.

Another Vernon athlete, Kevin Hill, 27, crashed yesterday during his run in the semi-finals for the snowboard cross. He finished the run, placing eighth overall in the event.

Hill tweeted: “I raced my heart out for Canada today and did everything I could to get a medal…. Thanks so much for everyone's support.”

Yesterday, Dorey wrote to his Facebook supporters. 

Well, that's it for practice here in Sochi. Been a pretty crazy couple years trying to get ready for this contest, and the big day is tomorrow. I'm so damn lucky to have made it here, I say that because there's quite a few people that deserve to be competing tomorrow but won't be…. No matter what happens tomorrow, I'm so pumped that I made it this far."

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To contact the reporter for this story, email Charlotte Helston at chelston@infotelnews.ca, call (250)309-5230 or tweet @charhelston.

—This story was edited at 11:30 a.m. to include the results of the men's half pipe ski event and to change the headline.