Canada shines in relatively new Olympic events, especially those in freestyle skiing

With 24 medals through Friday's competitions in Sochi, at least one more guaranteed in men's hockey, and some promising events such as snowboarding parallel slalom and speed skating team pursuit, Canada could well reach or break the national Winter Olympics record of 26 from Vancouver. While it's unlikely Canada will hit some of the more optimistic pre-Games projections of 30-plus medals, 27 or more is possible, and that would maintain the Canadian streak of improving in the total medal count at every Winter Games since 1984. What's led to that continuous improvement? A key part of the picture has been Canadian success in new events that have been introduced since then. Here's a chart of the events introduced since 1984 and how Canada has done in them, organized by the year each event officially entered the Olympics. (Multiple events in a sport that entered in the same year are grouped together.)

As you can see from the bottom of that chart, 59 of the 107 Winter Olympic medals Canada earned from 1988 to 2010 (56 per cent) came in events added in 1988 or later. That trend has held up even more in Sochi, with 15 of the 24 medals Canada has claimed thus far (67 per cent) coming in events introduced from 1988 on (and that's with several of those events still to come). You can also look at this by sport rather than event, as James Mirtle of The Globe and Mail did; he found that freestyle skiing, short-track speedskating, curling, snowboarding and skeleton, the five winter sports added since 1988, have seen Canada claim nearly 20 per cent of the available medals in those events and have accounted for over half of all Canadian medals won since 1988. Here's another chart showing the Canadian medals in those sports from 1992 to present. (This is similar to the earlier chart, but combines all events within a sport, goes by the year any event in a sport was added, and ignores events added in previously-contested sports such as biathlon, ski jumping and long-track speedskating.)

The effects in those sports alone aren't quite as notable as if you include new events in existing sports, but they still represent massive portions of the Canadian medal totals. Short-track speedskating and freestyle skiing in particular have been huge for Canada, with freestyle skiing being especially important this year. In this video, 2010 ski cross gold medalist Ashleigh McIvor and Yahoo's Evan Doherty discuss Marielle Thompson and Kelsey Serwa's gold-silver finish in ski cross, plus why Canada's done so well in freestyle skiing in Sochi:

The freestyle skiing performance in Sochi has been historic on a number of fronts. The nine medals hauled in during these Olympics match how many Canada's won in freestyle skiing in all previous games, and what's really remarkable is that two Canadians have appeared on the podium four separate times in freestyle skiing events in Sochi. (Canadians notched two podium spots in men's and women's moguls, women's ski cross and women's slopestyle, with Mike Riddle's silver in men's halfpipe representing the ninth medal.) Before these Games, Canada had only done that twice in freestyle skiing, with Philippe LaRoche and Lloyd Langlois winning silver and bronze in men's aerials in 1994 and Veronica Brenner and Deidra Dionne taking silver and bronze in women's aerials in 2002. It seems freestyle skiing is still on the rise in Canada, and the expansion of freestyle skiing events in the Olympics (which is partly thanks to their success at the X Games and the hard work of Canadian pioneers like Sarah Burke) is definitely a positive for Canadian medal hopes.

Overall, the introduction of new Winter Olympic sports and new events within existing sports has been tremendously positive for Canada. While the overall number of available medals has increased substantially since 1988 (there were 138 total medals in Calgary, and there will be 294 handed out in Sochi), the Canadian share of those medals has gone up more. There will be 2.13 times as many medals handed out in 2014 as there were in 1988, but Canadian athletes have already won 24, 4.8 times as many medals as the five they picked up in Calgary (and that total could still rise). The Own The Podium strategy of increasing overall funding and targeting that funding more narrowly towards true medal contenders has certainly helped Canada's dominance in new sports, as many of these events have top Canadian contenders (and don't have as deep of a worldwide field as, say, biathlon or cross-country skiing), but the Canadian terrain's likely a factor here too. While not all of Canada has the massive slopes required for alpine skiing success, there are plenty of places where you can practice the tricks required to excel in freestyle skiing or snowboarding, which is how an elite snowboarding talent like Mark McMorris can come from an extremely flat city like Regina. These new events and sports seem here to stay, and Canadians hoping to do well in the medal count should be grateful for that.