Preview of day 11 of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver

From Sportsbeat Staff, Vancouver

DAY 11 of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics will see the conclusion of the prestigious ice dancing competition with home favourites Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir in pole position ahead of the free dance.

HOME ADVANTAGE: Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir are hoping to stay ahead of the competition
to win their first Olympic gold medal (Getty Images)

The Canadians have an advantage of just over two points ahead of Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White, while world champions Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin from Russia cannot be ruled out as they currently sit in third.

The Russians had held a slender lead after the compulsory dance but the judges did not warm to their controversial Aboriginal inspired program in the original dance.

Virtue and Moir, who claimed bronze at last year's World Championships in Los Angeles, are using their home crowd to spur them on towards the Olympic gold medal.

"We're very happy with our performance," said Moir.

"We enjoyed every second on the ice with the home crowd. It's been a very special experience for us."

Great Britain's siblings Sinead and John Kerr, who have admitted this may be their last Olympics, are in eighth while teammates Penny Commes and Nicholas Buckland are currently 20th on their Olympic debut.

The women's ice hockey competition reaches the knock out stages with defending champions Canada taking on Finland and Turin 2006 silver medallists Sweden facing bronze medallists the USA.

Canada and the USA will be favourites to make Thursday's gold medal match after winning all three of their preliminary group games while the men's qualification playoffs take place on day twelve.

The final ski jumping event takes place on day eleven with the large hill team event taking place at Whistler Olympic Park.

Double bronze medallist Gregor Schlierenzaur will be competing for defending champions Austria while double silver medallist Adam Malysz will be hoping he can help to capture a medal for his native Poland.

Four jumpers will take one jump each before the top eight teams go through to the final round but there is no place for double Olympic champion Simon Ammann with Switzerland not taking part in the event.

There are only two games remaining in the curling round-robin with Great Britain's men still in the running for a medal if they can defeat Germany while undefeated Canada look to continue their form taking on the USA.

Eve Muirhead's British team lie sixth after four losses but could still qualify if they record good results against Denmark in their penultimate game and again when they take on Canada on Tuesday.

Medals will be decided in the men's and women's cross country team sprints at Whistler while qualification takes place in the men's freestyle skiing aerials competition.