Olympic Athlete Profile-Maelle Ricker/Women's Snowboarding/Canada

Maelle Ricker, a Canadian snowboarder, is the first gold medalist (so far) that we are profiling her. She won Canada's second gold medal of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics yesterday. Ricker also became the first Canadian woman to win gold in either the winter or summer games on Canadian soil.

The competition featured many outstanding snowboarders including Deborah Anthonioz of France who won silver, Olivia Nobs of Switzerland who won bronze, defending world champion Helen Olafsen of Norway and Lindsay Jacobellis of the United States.

Jacobellis, who was a medal favorite, fell in the semi-finals and failed to qualify for the final run. A similar affected Ricker's teammate Dominque Maltais who fell during a qualifying run.

Ricker was born on Dec. 2, 1978, in British Columbia where she still resides. Her first Olympic competition was at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. During the 2006 Olympics in Turin, Italy, Ricker was hospitalized for a concussion.

The Canadian snowboarder has also competed at several Winter X Games competition's in Aspen, Colo., where she won a bronze medal in 2007. But, she skipped a trip to Colorado this year to focus on Olympic-training.

Ricker told "The Toronto Sun" that getting off to a good start was vital to a positive run:

"I tried to explode out of the gate. I really wanted to get out of that gate as fast I can," Ricker said. "It was really, really hard today to get a clean run all the way down the course, but I just held on and did my best."

Ricker also told the Toronto newspaper that her serious fall at the Italian Olympics was a prime factor for her:

"Turin was such a motivator for me, it just made me work that much harder for today."

Her victory is considered the biggest snowboarding win for Canada since Ross Rebagilati won gold in Nagano.

SIDEBAR: Heather Richardson, the High Point, NC, speed skater who we profiled in our first entry in this series finished a strong sixth in the 5,000 meter competition yesterday. The gold medal in that event was won by South Korean speed skater Mo Tae-bun, and it was considered to be a surprising result.