Both for­mer and cur­rent Dart­mouth ath­letes posted solid per­for­mances in the open­ing days of the 2010 Van­cou­ver Win­ter Olympics.

Sara Stude­baker ’07 led all Amer­i­cans in the women’s biathlon com­pe­ti­tion as Olympics kicked off this week­end. She fin­ished 45th in the 7.5-kilo­me­ter sprint — 2:10 be­hind Anas­tazia Kus­mina of Slo­va­kia, who won the event in a time of 19:55.6. Stude­baker was dis­ci­plined through­out the com­pe­ti­tion, only notch­ing one penalty in the event.

In her first Olympic race, Laura Spec­tor ’10 ended the day as the sec­ond-high­est-fin­ish­ing Amer­i­can. Nick­named “Spec” be­cause of her last name and short stature — she is listed at only 4’11” tall and 112 pounds. Spec­tor, a bi­ol­ogy major at the Col­lege, fin­ished the race in 77th place.

Stude­baker will com­pete in one ad­di­tional event — the Women’s 10 km Pur­suit, held on Feb. 16. Spec­tor will not be com­pet­ing in any other Olympic events.

Dart­mouth grad­u­ates Cherie Piper ’06 and Gillian Apps ’06 both earned points in Canada’s 18-0 thrash­ing of Slo­va­kia Sat­ur­day night at Canada Place. The Cana­di­ans out­shot their op­po­nents 67-9.

Goal dif­fer­en­tial is a tiebreaker in the early rounds of the Olympic tour­na­ment, which may ex­plain the seem­ingly ex­ces­sive num­ber of goals posted by the Cana­di­ans.

It was the largest mar­gin of vic­tory in the his­tory of Olympic women’s hockey, which has been an event since 1998.

Piper had a goal and an as­sist in the win­ning ef­fort while Apps reg­is­tered two as­sists on the night.

But be­fore any­one be­gins to feel too bad for the Slo­va­kian team, it dished out a great deal more abuse when com­pet­ing against Bul­garia in a pre-qual­i­fy­ing match in 2008, de­mol­ish­ing the Bul­gar­ian squad by a score of 82-0.

Canada, the de­fend­ing gold medal­ists, will next see ac­tion against Switzer­land tonight.

An­drew Weibrecht ’09 will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the men’s down­hill ski com­pe­ti­tion in Van­cou­ver, but the event has been post­poned until Feb. 15 due to poor snow con­di­tions at Whistler Creek­side.