Weekend recap: Canada's short track skaters shine again

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With the winter Olympic sports season really kicking into high gear this past weekend, Canadian athletes had plenty of medal chances on the ice and snow. The results were mixed. Let's recap.

Short track speed skating: Canadians don't miss a beat

Rust never sleeps, but it didn't catch up to Canada's short track skaters after a month-long layoff.

After rocketing to 14 medals (including nine gold) across the first two World Tour meets at Montreal's Maurice Richard Arena, Canadians piled up another seven at the third stop in Beijing over the weekend. Danaé Blais led the way, winning the women's 1,000 metres for her first international solo victory and helping the women's relay team to gold.

Félix Roussel won the men's 1,000m to give Canada three golds for the weekend. Florence Brunelle took silver in the women's 500m for her first career individual medal, and Rikki Doak joined her on that podium with a bronze. Willam Dandjinou crashed in the men's 1,000m but took silver in the 1,500 to stay atop the overall standings. Steven Dubois is in fifth place after picking up a silver in the 500m.

The World Tour continues this weekend in the short track hotbed of Seoul.

Figure skating: Canada shut out at the Grand Prix Final

For the first time since 2019, no Canadians reached the podium at this exclusive event for the top six in each discipline on the Grand Prix tour.

Reigning pairs world champions Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamp would have been a great bet for a medal after winning both of their Grand Prix assignments. But they withdrew due to an illness, leaving Canada with just two entries — both in ice dance.

Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha placed a respectable fourth after finishing sixth in the regular-season standings, while a fall in their short program doomed Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier to a disappointing fifth-place finish. Gilles and Poirier took silver at the world championships last spring and were ranked third on the Grand Prix tour this season.

American skaters won three of the four events as Madison Chock and Evan Bates (ice dance) and Ilia Malinin (men's) successfully defended their titles while Amber Glenn unseated Japan's Kaori Sakamoto for the women's crown on Saturday. Germany's Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin repeated as pairs champions on Friday. Here's a recap of the final day and here's That Figure Skating Show's Asher Hill and Brenda Irving breaking it all down.

The figure skating season resumes in the new year with national championships leading into the worlds in Boston in late March. The Canadian championships are in mid-January in Laval, Que.

Alpine skiing: Slow start to the speed season

Jack Crawford's fourth-place finish in Friday's downhill opener turned out to be the country's best result of the men's World Cup stop at Beaver Creek resort in Colorado. Brodie Seger was 21st in Saturday's super-G as the other five Canadians (including Crawford) failed to finish the course, while no Canadians managed to complete both runs of Sunday's giant slalom.

Swiss skiers swept the golds as journeymen Justin Murisier (downhill) and Thomas Tumler (giant slalom) earned their first career World Cup wins and star Marco Odermatt (super-G) picked up his 38th. Lucas Pinheiro Braathen took silver in the GS to become the first Brazilian man to reach a World Cup alpine podium.

Odermatt got the silver in the downhill but DNF'd in the GS for the second time in two races this season. He won nine of 10 giant slaloms last season while capturing the GS, super-G and downhill crystal globes along with his third consecutive overall title.

The men's World Cup circuit shifts back to Europe this week while the women move into Beaver Cree for a downhill, super-G and giant slalom of their own. American great Lindsey Vonn won't be cleared to race in time, but her comeback from a six-year retirement is off to an encouraging start. Vonn, 40, said she feels "really freaking close" after competing in some lower-level downhill and super-G races over the weekend at Colorado's Copper Mountain.

Other interesting news/results:

* Saturday's dual moguls competitions in Sweden were cancelled due to fog. Canada's Mikaël Kingsbury earned his record-extending 92nd World Cup victory on Friday in the solo men's moguls event while Maia Schwinghammer took bronze in the women's for her first World Cup moguls medal.

* Judokas Kyle Reyes and François Gauther-Drapeau earned bronze for Canada in the men's 100kg and 81kg weight classes, respectively, at a Grand Slam event in Tokyo. It was Reyes' seventh career Slam medal and Gauthier-Drapeau's eighth.

* Canadian halfpipe skier Brendan Mackay followed up his victory in the World Cup season opener with a fourth-place finish at China's Secret Garden resort, where Americans swept the men's podium. Cassie Sharpe and Amy Fraser were fourth and fifth in the women's event, won by China star Eileen Gu.

* Canadian bobsleigh pilots Cynthia Appiah and Melissa Lotholz each placed in the top 10 in both the monobob and two-woman events at the World Cup opener in Germany. Kaillie Humphries, an Olympic and world champion for Canada before switching to the U.S. a few years ago, finished fifth in the two-woman and seventh in the monobob in her first World Cup competition since becoming a mom six months ago. 

* Canada's Dylan Bibic was closing in on his second consecutive men's endurance title in the Track Cycling Champions League when a terrifying crash caused the cancellation of the season finale in England. British rider Katy Marchant was taken to hospital with a broken forearm and dislocated fingers after she and Germany's Alessa-Catriona Propster went over the barrier and into the crowd during a women's race. It was unclear whether Bibic's competition will be completed at some point.