Team BC Report from the Canada Winter Games »

 

 

 

February 23rd, 2015

B.C.’s para cross country athletes posted impressive results at the Canada Winter Games on Monday, winning two gold and one silver medal.

Revelstoke’s Emily Suchy won gold in the 2.5km sit-ski event. Her teammate Andy Lin of Burnaby also won gold in the 2.5km standing classic para male event. North Vancouver’s Emily Weekes took silver in the 2.5km standing classic para female race.

The gold medal finish was Lin’s best result for a race of this calibre. He’s been competing for four years and has won gold at other events but never at a Canada Winter Games.

“It’s a really big accomplishment,” said Lin. “It felt really good to win gold and I’m pretty proud of myself.”

Lin wasn’t the only skier proud of his result, his teammate and silver medallist Emily Weekes was cheering him on at the course in Prince George.

“I’m really happy for Andy,” she said. “We train together a lot in the lower mainland and we are always supporting each other. We have some little competitions too – I was giving him a hard time today because even though he won the gold in his race, I beat him by 30 seconds in my race so I had to remind him that I kicked his butt a bit.”

In the 7.5km (women) Team BC had two top 10 finishes with Hannah Mehain (Vernon) the top finisher in ninth and in 10km (men) classic Team BC had three top ten finishes with Colin Ferrie (Kimberley) placing fifth.

Prince George figure skater Justin Hampole wowed the hometown crowd with his short program earning 36.78 points and sits in second place in the boys pre-novice.  Beres Clements (Gibsons) scored 33.97 and is in third place.

“I am really happy with my skate today. It is the best ever I have skated this short program. Skating in front of the hometown crowd was really motivating,” said Hampole.

Team BC pre-novice women also skated their short programs on Monday. Olivia Gran (Kelowna) is in 1st with a score of 41.37. Gran skated a clean program, including a double axel-triple toe, and achieved a new personal best short program score. Gran’s teammate, Alisa Lyesina (Victoria) is in 5th after the short program.

Special Olympians Eric Pahima (Vancouver) and Matthew Lai (Richmond) competed in the mens level 2 elements and placed first and second.  Pahima and Lai will skate their freeskate on Wednesday night.

Team BC men’s hockey kicked off week two of competition with a win over New Brunswick 5-3 on Sunday night.  They followed that with a tough game against Manitoba that ended in a 5-2 loss.

Team BC curling played Nunavut and took the win 10-3 and in the second game played the Northwest Territories and won 8-1.

In individual play in squash, Gavin Maxwell (Victoria) and
Matthew Toth (Richmond) advanced to the semi-finals and in team action BC won all three encounters in team competition pool play.

Badminton’s Qingzi Ouyang (Vancouver) has advanced to the quarter finals in womens’ single and Pin Ho (Surey) and Joshua Liu (Vancouver) both advanced to the quarter finals on the men’s side.  The matches and medal round will be broadcast on TSN live tomorrow.

In table tennis the boys have advanced to the team competition finals and the girls will compete for bronze.

To view the original article, click here.