As impressive as it was for Brad Gushue’s curling rink to win the first Olympic gold medal for athletes hailing from Newfoundland and Labrador, the accomplishments of Team Canada’s Manitoba members may be even more amazing.

There is no doubt that Gushue’s performance was quite a feat. Never before in the history of Canada’s participation in the Winter Olympics — and that’s going back to 1920 — had anybody from the Rock won a single medal, let alone a gold.

It is particularly amazing because the Gushue rink, with the exception of Ontario-born Russ Howard, developed their skills despite a dearth of competition from anybody outside their own province.

It is simply a matter of distance and demographics. If you lived in Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick or Nova Scotia and you wanted to see how you would fare against some of your provincial counterparts, would you drive a couple of hours between those three provinces, which are home to more than 1.8 million Canadians combined? Or, would you travel several times that on the car/ferry trip to Newfoundland, where the population is considerably smaller?

Manitoba, on the other hand, has almost 1.2 million inhabitants. And, even though trips to the neighbouring provinces can sometimes take the better part of a day’s drive, there are also plenty of willing combatants in a multitude of sports in North Dakota and Minnesota, just a couple of hours’ drive south.

Competitors from all over Canada and the northern U.S. undoubtedly played a valuable role in the early development of Canada’s most decorated Olympian, Cindy Klassen. The winner of five speed-skating medals in Turin, including gold in the 1,500-metre race, as well as another bronze from Salt Lake City four years ago, Klassen is without peer in our country’s storied Olympic history.

And although fellow Winnipegger and speed skater Clara Hughes is not Klassen’s equal in sheer number of medals, she is arguably the more spectacular athlete. She won gold in the 5,000 metres in Turin, her second medal of the Games to go along with silver in the team pursuit. The unassuming 33-year-old also won bronze in the 5,000 metres four years ago, as well as two more bronzes in the 1996 Olympics — that would be the summer version, in which Hughes wasn’t wearing skates but sitting on the saddle of her racing bike.

Coming into these Games, Hughes was one of only four athletes in Olympic history to win medals in both the Summer and Winter Games. The others were Eddie Eagan, an American who won gold in boxing in 1920 and in the four-man bobsled in 1932; Jacob Tullin Thams, a Norwegian who took gold in ski jumping in 1924 and silver in yachting 12 years later; and Christa Luding-Rothenburger, an East German who won two golds in speed skating in 1984, followed by a silver in 1988 and a bronze four years after that. In 1988, she also won silver in match sprint cycling.

But now Hughes is the only Olympian — to date — to win multiple medals in both the Summer and Winter Games. And what makes her wins all the more impressive is that she turned to speed skating only after the 2000 Summer Olympics, fulfilling an ambition to test her world-class legs and lungs on the ice.

So, taking Klassen’s four individual medals (she also was part of the silver-winning team pursuit, along with three other athletes, including Shannon Rempel, another Winnipegger) and Hughes’ one, Manitoba’s women athletes combined to win more than 20% of Canada’s total haul in Turin. (Winnipegger Jennifer Botterill was also a vital cog in the women’s ice hockey team’s gold medal.)

To put that in perspective, all of the country’s male athletes won a total of eight medals. Plus, Klassen, Hughes et al are from a province that is home to just 3% of Canada’s population.

And, to give Gushue and his team their due, their win represented about 4% of Canada’s medal total and came from a province with about 1.6% of the country’s population.

Forget about Quebec. Canada had better concentrate on keeping Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador in Confederation if it wants to own the podium in Vancouver/ Whistler in 2010.