Canyon Ski Hill Resort is quickly becoming a favourite place for Brayden Kuroda.

“Yeah for sure, I’m just having fun here and getting a chance to hang out with friends. It is a lot of fun,” said Kuroda, who is from Penticton, and won his second gold medal of the Canada Winter Games for Team BC.

He landed his first gold in the aerials event on Sunday, his second came Monday in moguls.

“I did a big cork seven at the top and landed nice in line, which I was struggling with a little bit earlier today, and then I pinned it at the top air and let it fly through the bottom section. As I was going into the bottom air — I didn’t have the greatest bottom air in my first run so I was a little worried about that, I came through with a big, nice back mute and it turned out to be a good run today,” said Kuroda.

Kuroda sat on top of the leader board after the qualifier with a score of 83.89, he improved on his final run with 86.81 points.

The skier has a short, but sweet, stay at the Canada Winter Games in Red Deer. He has been on the road competing at NorAms for almost three weeks and jets out on Wednesday to Colorado for another.

The freestyle team will be back in action on Thursday, Feb. 21 for the big air competition at Canyon Ski Resort in Red Deer, Alta.

Table tennis added to Team BC’s medal tally winning a gold medal in the women’s team event and a bronze in the men’s. The women’s team consisted of Patrina Hui (Burnaby), Fiona Nie (Surrey) and Benita Zhou (Vancouver). The men’s team included David Lin (Richmond), Kenny Jiang (Burnaby), and Steve Wang (North Vancouver).

All three women advanced to the second round of the knockout round Tuesday.  While the men will start round one of the knock out round.  Mixed double will also take place Tuesday.

The men’s artistic gymnastics team fought hard to earn themselves spots in the individual event finals. Although the team placed 5th overall in the team final event, they are ready to start preparing for Wednesday.

“They gave it their all today,” said head coach, Alexander Pozdniakov (Vancouver). “There were some great performances from the guys.”

Team BC wheelchair basketball earned their first win at the 2019 Canada Winter Games on Monday.

With everyone contributing, 11 of the 12 players scored points, they handily defeated Nova Scotia 66-33.

“It felt good to get our first win at the Canada Winter Games, but it felt equally as good to execute our game plan and play Team BC basketball,” said co-captain Joel Ewert (Prince George). “We did a lot of awesome things today that will help us progress as the tournament goes on.”

Top scorers in the game were Gabriel Harrison (Pender Island) with 16 points, Tanner Jung (Langley) with 15 points and Nicholas van Bakel (Pender Island) with 10 points.

Next up for Team BC (1-1) wheelchair be a double-header of games on Tuesday when they play Newfoundland and Labrador at 11 a.m. and then face Ontario at 5 p.m.
For Team BC short track speed skaters celebrating Family Day is not that difficult. Sisters Annabelle and Jane Green (both from Burnaby) raced twice as competitors.

Jane ended up being the only Team BC skater to qualify from repachage to the 1500 metre women’s main event, joining Samantha Spencer (Burnaby) and Sherilyn Chung (Coquitlam) Both of those skaters qualified direct to the main in yesterday’s qualification rounds.

In the semi final Team BC finished in the middle of the pack, knocking them out as only the top two from each round advances. Chung had a strong start to her race, but had an unfortunate fall near the start of the race and did not advance.

Quebec ended up sweeping the podium. Jane Green finished in seventh in B final with a time of 2:43:84 and Chung finished second in the C final with a time of 2:34:41. Spencer placed fourth with a time of 2:48:804.

In the men’s 1500 m event Noah Hyun skated through the first round of Repechage, qualifying for round two. Hyun would advance to main after a lane violation from an Ontario skater. Hyun joins Lukas Macdonald (Vancouver) and Keanan St. Rose (Prince George) in the main event, both of whom qualified on Sunday through the qualification rounds.

Macdonald started the semi final with a strong lead, maintaining this for most of the race before being taken over by skaters from Quebec, knocking him out of the race for a medal.

In the B final, St. Rose placed in third with a time of 2:27:54. Hyun finished the C final in fifth place with a time of 2:26:81 and Macdonald finished with a time of 2:36:87.

In the team relays Chung, Jane Green and twin sisters Ainsley Spencer and Samantha Spencer will have a shot at a medal after finishing just behind Quebec. The second place time secures them a spot in Friday’s A final.

While the men’s relay team of Marshall Shupe (Maple Ridge), St. Rose (Prince George), Macdonald and Craig Miller (Prince George) had a great start to  they were chased closely by Ontario of the duration. Team BC finished with a time of 4:21:59 securing their spot in Friday’s A final.

Training will commence Tuesday and the main event for the 500m on Wednesday.
Ringette lost a hard fought 3-6 game to Quebec. Shots on goal were 34 for BC and 41 for Quebec.  BC scored the lone goal in the second quarter and actually outscored Quebec 2 to 1 in the third quarter. Ringette will play its last round robin game against Saskatchewan on Tuesday.

Monday was a training day for biathlon. Tuesday’s race is a pursuit format. The pursuit is often the most exciting race in biathlon with each bi athlete starting in the order they finished from the sprint race. The first biathlete to start for the men will be Leo Grandbois of Quebec and Jenna Sherrington for the women as gold medalists from the Sprint competition. At five second intervals in their sprint finishing order, each biathlete will ‘pursue’ the gold medalist. The first to cross the finish line wins. Athletes will shoot four times in the order of prone, prone, standing, standing. BC’s Andrei Secu (Coquitlam) will start third, Larissa Black (Squamish) will start fourth and Gillian Gowling (Whistler) starts in fifth place.

In artistic swimming, the duet free preliminary event will be held on Tuesday afternoon after which technical and free routine scores will be combined to determine which pairs go on to finals. In the duet tech event (prelim), Hannah McDonagh-Proud (Nanaimo) and Kendall Stirrat (Vancouver) swam to It doesn’t mean a thing by Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga and sit in 6th place. Kaitlyn Aylesworth (Victoria) and Mara Lambert-Wilson (Victoria) swam to Michael Jackson and sit in 10th place.  The team scored 70.9450 and currently sit in 4th place

In boxing semi-finals Monday night Brayden Sims (Fort St. John) defeated Jad Khabbaz of Quebec when the referee stopped the contest in the 60kg bout. This was the only defeat for Team BC on the night. Jerome Leroyer – 64kg (Nanaimo), Dylan Clark – 69kg (Cranbrook), Jonathan Hannah – 75kg (North Vancouver) and Brayden Hellekson – 81kg (Nelson) will all fight in the repechage Tuesday night.

It was a heartbreaking loss for Team BC, who appeared to be on their way to a win over host Alberta. Tied 4-4 with 28 seconds left in the game, an Alberta forward managed (Coquitlam). Team BC was leading 2-0 after the first period with goals from Steel Quiring (Vernon) and Ty Gibson (Victoria). In the middle frame Graham Sward (Abbotsford) got on the board for BC, however Alberta put two past the goalie to make it 3-2 as they headed into the third period.

Team BC struck again within the first minute of the third period to give them a 4-2 lead. It was late in the game when Alberta put the game-tying goal on the board and took that momentum to continue to pressure BC, scoring the game winner with 28 seconds remaining. Team BC now plays Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.