Canadians win pot of medals in one cool weekend
Winter athletes look strong ahead of Olympics
From dynamic kids — teenagers such as Justine Dufour-Lapointe and Mark McMorris winning World Cup moguls and X Games snowboard gold, respectively — to agedefying old-timers — Maëlle Ricker winning world championship snowboardcross gold — it was a podium fest for spinners, sliders, skaters and jumpers.
In world championship and World Cup competition around the globe, Canadians recorded five wins, six seconds and a third.
And in Olympic disciplines at X Games, where the best-of-the-best are invited, it was one gold, two silver and three bronze.
“It’s super exciting,” Ricker, a North Vancouver native, said of the bountiful medal haul just a year out from the Sochi 2014 Olympics. “It’s really showing that the Own the Podium program after 2010 is still working and actually going beyond.
“Hopefully, it continues to rise through the (Sochi) Games and into the future.”
Canada’s other world championship winner Saturday was no surprise as Calgary’s Kaillie Humphries, the most dominant woman driver bobsled has ever known, defended her title at St. Moritz, Switzerland.
Humphries, also the reigning Olympic champion, and first-year brakeman Chelsey Valois, of Zenon Park, Sask., had a four-run combined time of four minutes, 30.31 seconds to finish 0.68 ahead of the American duo of Elana Meyers and Katie Eberling. ❚ “I’m ecstatic,” said Calgary’s Humphries, who has won 10 of 12 international races over the last year. Christine Nesbitt placed first and second in a pair of 1,000-metre races on the weekend at the ISU world sprint speedskating championships, but failed to repeat as overall winner after finishing just 12th in two 500 metre races.
Jamie Gregg of Edmonton was second both days in the men’s 500 behind Joji Kato of Japan, while Junio Gilmore of Calgary made the podium Sunday in third place. ❚ In Calgary, Justine Dufuor-Lapointe, 18, and her sister, Chloe, went 1-2 in a World Cup event, with promising 17-year-old Andi Naude, of Okanagan Falls, finishing sixth. Quebecer Mikael Kingsbury, with his 18th consecutive podium finish, captured the men’s event.