Olympic sports roundup: Canada goes on pre-holiday medal blitz
Catch up on what you may have missed over the weekend
It was a jam-packed weekend of high-performance sport around the world, including gold-medal performances by Canadians in big air snowboarding, short track speed skating and ski cross.
Those victories have helped Canada's winter athletes record 87 podium finishes this season as we head into the holiday break.
Here's a look at what you may have missed.
Snowboarder is stoked
Canadians Max Parrot and Sebastien Toutant finished 1-2 on Saturday in the World Cup big air snowboard event at Copper Mountain.
It's Parrot's first gold medal of the season after back-to-back silvers at a World Cup event in South Korea and a Dew Tour stop in Colorado.
"It's been three podiums in a row, now I've got my first first place of the season and I end the year really well, so I'm really stoked," Parrot said.
Thompson on top
Marielle Thompson is on a roll and can't be stopped. The defending Olympic champion in ski cross soared to another World Cup win in Austria this weekend.
That gold medal, her third in four events this season, further solidified her lead in the overall standings.
Hamelin leads short track medal haul
Charles Hamelin returned to the short track World Cup podium with a gold-medal finish in the 1,000-metre event in Gangneung, South Korea on Sunday.
Hamelin's gold was one of nine medals won on the weekend by the Canadian team, their highest one-event total since November of 2015.
Canadians crowd podium in Lake Placid
Canada's men's bobsleigh team took half of all the medals up for grabs this weekend in Lake Placid, N.Y. Chris Spring and Justin Kripps scored silver and bronze, respectively, in the two-man event:
Spring also piloted Canada to a bronze in the four-man:
It was a less successful weekend for their teammate Nick Poloniato, whose four-man team crashed out in both of its runs on Saturday:
On the women's side, Kaillie Humphries and Cynthia Appiah followed up their gold in Whistler with bronze in Lake Placid, which Humphries said she is "happy" with:
In skeleton, women's slider Mirela Rahneva won her first career medal, a bronze, in just her second World Cup race.
Gough is streaking
Alex Gough is growing accustomed to climbing the World Cup luge podium. The Canadian scored a bronze medal in Park City, Utah, this weekend to make it three medal performances in as many World Cup events this season.
The luge team gets back on the track in the new year in Germany on Jan. 5.
Erik Guay 'skied to the edge'
Canadian alpine veteran Erik Guay skied his way back onto the podium with a bronze-winning run at Val Gardena, Italy.
It's the first World Cup super-G medal for Guay since 2010, and it came at the same venue.
"Val Gardena has always been good to me," said Guay, who is regaining his form following his sixth knee surgery. "A lot of times when I ski super-G I don't push as hard to the limits as I should but today I skied to the edge, no mistakes, clean run and I'm very happy."
Canadians soar to silver
Catrine Lavallée, Travis Gerrits and Lewis Irving capped off the weekend by winning silver for Canada in Sunday's World Cup aerials team event in Beida Lake, China.
Russia won gold with 255.81 points, Canada scored 243.94, and Australia took bronze with 228.85.
With files from The Canadian Press