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Canada’s medal projections likely affected by short-track speed skaters’ rough day

A "flat" performance from Marianne St-Gelais and a fall from François Hamelin added up to a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Canada's short trackers ... and quite possibly affects the Canadian target of having the biggest medal haul at Sochi 2014.

Canada medalled in the women's 500 metres (silver) and men's 5,000 relay (gold) four years in Vancouver. This time, it failed to reach the final in either. The latter also nixes Charles Hamelin's chance of winning four medals at the Games and becoming Canada's most decorated Olympian.

Going into the Games, the Canadian Press projected Canada to medal in five of the eight short track races. So far, it's batting only 1-for-3. Charles Hamelin still has to race both the men's 500 and 1,000. The women's 3,000 relay team will start from the second spot in Saturday's final.

Anything can and often does happen in short track speed skating. The women's 500-metre final, where three of the four racers collided in the opening strides and Jianrou Li of China skated home unopposed to gold, was a proof of such.

That final, of course, did not involve the veteran St-Gelais. In her semifinal, the 23-year-old was tentative off the start, which proved decisive in a short race. St-Gelais, who had an outside start position, was boxed in at the turn between Italy's Arianna Fontana and the Netherlands' Jorien ter Mors and finished third; only the top two advanced. St-Gelais finished seventh overall.

François Hamelin fell early in the semifinal of the men's 5,000-metre relay semifinal, which left too big a gap for Canada to make up. The team had two falls during the World Cup season but was able to recover.

The hook with short track is that four skaters career around the perimeter of an ice sheet the size of a hockey rink, endlessly fraught with the potential to touch blades and wipe out. Very little can be taken for granted, and it simply seems to be a case of both St-Gelais and the men's relay team having their number come up.

The CBC said St-Gelais had a "flat" race.

In the women's 500 final, Great Britain's Elise Christie was penalized for causing the collision that took out Fontana and South Korea's Seung-Hi Park. Fontana got up to take silver with Park winning bronze. Park was hoping to make South Korea the first nation to have won gold in all eight short track races.

Charles Hamelin was touted before the games as having a chance to medal in the 500, 1000 and 1,500, which along with a relay medal would have given him a career total of six, topping Cindy Klassen's Canadian record.

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.