How Canada’s Olympic athletes did this weekend
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Canadian athletes captured medals in a variety of winter Olympic sports over the past few days. Here are the highlights:
Canadian skaters won a pair of short track thrillers.
With the final World Cup stop of the calendar year taking place in the short track hotbed of Seoul, two Canadian men each upset a South Korean star in a photo finish.
On Saturday, Steven Dubois clipped Olympic 1,500m champion Hwang Dae-heon at the line to win the men’s 1,000m race. It was the first gold of the season for Dubois, who won a medal of each colour at the 2022 Olympics. Canada’s Pascal Dion got the bronze. William Dandjinou and Félix Roussel later made it a double double-podium day for Canada by taking silver and bronze, respectively, in the men’s 1,500m.
On Sunday, Dandjinou upgraded to gold in the second men’s 1,500m of the weekend and denied Korea’s Park Ji-Won of a sweep by outstretching the world champion at the finish line. Dubois grabbed the bronze to once again put a pair of Canadians on the same podium.
The short track World Cup tour concludes in February with a pair of stops in Europe.
Rachel Homan captured her record-extending 14th Grand Slam of Curling women’s title.
The three-time Scotties Tournament of Hearts champion and her Ottawa-based rink defeated reigning world champ Silvana Tirinzoni’s Swiss team 8-4 in the women’s final on Sunday at the Grand Slam’s Masters event in Saskatoon. Homan is ranked third in the world, behind Tirinzoni, who’s won four straight world titles, and South Korea’s Eun-Ji Gim, who beat Homan in the final of last month’s Slam in Nova Scotia.
Top-ranked men’s skip Joël Retornaz of Italy continued his incredible season by defeating Scotland’s Ross Whyte 3-2 for his third Grand Slam title in as many tries.
The next Slam is the Canadian Open in Red Deer, Alta., in January.
Mikaël Kingsbury kept his podium streak going.
The freestyle skiing star won another gold in the men’s moguls on Friday and a bronze in the dual moguls on Saturday in France to make it four medals in four events this season. Friday’s win was Kingsbury’s 83rd on the World Cup tour, extending his all-time record. Canada’s Elliot Vaillancourt took silver in that event, his first-ever World Cup medal.
The final moguls World Cup stop of the calendar year takes place this Friday and Saturday in the country of Georgia.
Other top Canadian results:
* Eliot Grondin took bronze in Saturday’s men’s snowboard cross World Cup event in Italy. It was the second podium in as many tries this season for the 2022 double Olympic medallist, who won gold earlier this month.
* Ski jumper Alex Loutitt captured her third World Cup medal of the season on Friday with a silver in the women’s large hill event in Switzerland before finishing eighth in another large hill competition on Saturday.
* The Canadian women’s hockey team beat the United States in a shootout on Saturday in Sarnia, Ont., for their first win of this season’s Rivalry Series. The world champion Americans won the first three games of the seven-game tour before Canadian captain Marie-Philip Poulin scored the lone goal in Saturday’s shootout. The final three games are in February.