Morning links, Day 7

Happy (belated) b-day, Marianne St-Gelais, her silver in last night's women's 500m short-track event coming on her 20th birthday. St-Gelais is the youngest member of Canada's short-track team, and the country's youngest medalist at these Games so far. A surprise to some, perhaps, but not so much to her teammates, as this April 2009 Montreal Gazette report shows:

Only 16 at the time, St-Gelais was about to embark in the A final of the 500 metres in a Canadian elite series event when national team veteran Anne Maltais - 10 years her elder - skated over and said: "Don't take off too quickly, we'd like to try and keep up."

Shaun White, last night's emphatic halfpipe gold medalist, has been doing this snowboard thing for a long time. Here's the erstwhile Flying Tomato, ca. 1994 (HT to Yahoo!'s excellent Fourth-Place Medal blog):

On a big day for the U.S. yesterday, who looked most impressive - White, Lindsey Vonn or speed skater Shani Davis? I'd go with Vonn on her strong downhill over a course that everyone was having trouble with: "The pressure, for me, is gone. I got exactly what I came here to get. That was a gold medal and everyone expected me to get it, but it’s not as easy as just saying, ‘You can do it.’"

Teemu Selanne, who will meet up with fellow puck silverback Peter Forsberg in Sunday night's finale to the group games here, tied the Olympic scoring record with an assist in the Finns' 5-1 win over Belarus yesterday: "Nobody expects us to challenge the big teams, but you never know. We all come from the same league and drink the same beer."

Johnny Weir says he's planning a tell-all book, but really, what's left to tell? Here's Weir, telling People how he handled nerves before Tuesday's men's short programme: "I Pledged [as in Lemon Pledge] everything in my room. Some people eat, some people drink – but I Pledge everything." 

And colleague Randy Starkman, who's been carrying around Flat Stanley for so many of these Olympic things it's no wonder he's so skinny, landed no ordinary Olympian in the frame yesterday - Eric Heiden, and just so you know, Tuesday it the 30th anniversary of Heiden's gold-medal sweep at Lake Placid: