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Richard Lautens / Toronto Star Order this photo
Chloe, left and Justine hold hands as they are about to be introduced for the flower ceremony.
KRASNAYA POLYANA, RUSSIA—They jumped up and down holding each other, screaming at the top of their lungs, too excited to make any sense.
Not Canada’s gold and silver medal-winning sisters, Justine and Chloe Dufour-Lapointe . It was their parents, Johane Dufour and Yves Lapointe, standing at the bottom of the moguls run, watching the big screen, desperate to put their arms around their daughters.
“I’m so shaky I don’t know what to say,” Dufour said. “I’m so anxious to grab my babies. That’s the only thing I have in my head.”
Justine, Canada’s first gold medallist of the Sochi Olympics at age 19, and Chloe, the 22-year-old silver medallist, were far more composed.
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Going to the Olympics as a family — eldest sister Maxime made it to the final and placed 12th — is something these three sisters have always believed was possible, even when others didn’t.
They predicted it years ago, but few on Canada’s freestyle ski team really believed Maxime, who turned 25 as her sisters were getting their medals, would get the results she needed to qualify. She proved them wrong.
Even after the sisters arrived, the team’s medal expectation was still one. They delivered two.
Not much seemed to faze Justine on Saturday. When told Prime Minister Stephen Harper was calling, she calmly inquired, “individually or speaker phone?”
“It’s awesome being the first gold medal (winner) for Canada. It’s great and I will embrace that moment forever.”
Right before she stepped on to the podium, Justine said she was happy to have company.
“I saw Chloe and I took her hand,” she said. “We’ll live that moment together.”
That’s also when she heard her parents over the loud, enormous crowd between them.
“It wasn’t any other scream that I heard. It was my parents. They were just so happy,” Justine said, laughing. “Even me, I’m not that happy. I’m happy, but they were just way over happy.”
The family passion came about quite by accident. Dufour and Lapointe set out to raise sailors. Close-quarters trips on the family boat helped to forge the bonds that they rely on today.
They also skied in the Laurentians, north of their home in Montreal, starting lessons by the age of 3. But skiing was just a way to make the winter go by faster. In the summer, they were on the boat sailing every weekend — until Maxime decided change all that.
She started competing in moguls at 10, lured by the jumps. Her two younger sisters, seeing the fun she was having travelling with the team, wanted in.
Before they knew it, the parents were sailing alone while the daughters travelled around Quebec and later the world with elite teams.
Early on, Justine was known as fast and fearless, Chloe was the stylish one over the moguls, and Maxime was always one of the most skilled jumpers on the World Cup circuit. Winning requires excellence in all three areas.
Over the last two years, Justine has developed the full package to the point where she could, on occasion, challenge Hannah Kearney — the 2010 Olympic champion and one of the dominant freestyle skiers of all time, who finished third here.
On Saturday night, under the lights at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park, Justine and Chloe got better with each of the three runs on a challenging course. Kearney made the same mistake in the same place, landing off her top jump.
“It is tough to know that your Olympic career is over and it didn’t go as well as you wanted it to,” said Kearney, tears streaming down her face after winning the bronze medal.
Watching the event was Jean-Luc Brassard, the Canadian team’s assistant chef de mission who inspired a generation of Quebec moguls skiers with his 1994 Olympic gold medal. “We were dreaming about having three people on the podium, but two is already better than our real expectation,” he said.
Brassard had dinner with the three sisters earlier in the week in the athletes’ village and was struck by how confident the D-Ls — as they are often called — seemed to be: “I was amazed they were having fun, but focused. They had a plan.”
Said Chloe, who placed fifth in her first Olympics in Vancouver: “It was a big day, but a day I expected for four years. Tonight I pushed myself into that course, I gave my everything. It was a challenging course. This course needed to be skied with emotion. I skied it with my heart and the judges saw it.”
Even more emotional was sharing the podium with her younger sister and the Olympic experience with her oldest.
“We are so proud to represent Canada,” Chloe said. “To be the Dufour-Lapointe sisters at the Olympics was a challenge that we accomplished.”
Quebec City’s Audrey Robichaud, the fourth Canadian in the field, wound up 10th.
Maxime, who worked hard to change her style to get to the Olympics, said she wasn’t upset about not making it onto the podium.
“I got caught by a technical mistake,” she said. “So what? I’m 12th in my first Olympics. There’s no disappointment. I’m going home head up.”
The sisters, who skipped the opening ceremonies because they were too close to the competition, plan to stay in Sochi to soak it all in.
“It’s crazy, being an Olympic champion. I don’t believe it,” Justine said, “but probably I will tomorrow.”
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