Heartbeat Highlights

Here are some highlights from the past week in Canadian sports.

The SportCafé website is a great place to see posts from athletes about their personal experiences. The Latest News section also have news from Canadian sports organizations.

This week's highlight posts include:

• Andréanne Pichette at the Canada Cup mountain cycling (in French) with photos and video link. Click here.
• Alexandra McGee securing her spot on the Slalom kayak national team. Click here.
• Rob Watson planning on running the Ottawa 10K and ending up winning the National Championship (Ottawa) Marathon. Click here.

Canoe Kayak Piešt’any International Regatta U23

Canada will be hosting the World Junior and U23 Championships in Welland August 1-4. Canada's junior and U23 team including SportCafé co-founder Antoine Meunier represented Canada at the Piešt’any International Regatta in Slovakia this past weekend.

Here is the video for the C1 U23 200m. Antoine is in lane 8 (second from the bottom) and Ben Tardioli is in lane 5.


The strong Canadian team collected 19 medals including wins in:
U23 Women's K2 500 - Andreanne Langlois and Lissa Bissonnette
U23 Men's C1 1000 - Marc Tarling
U23 Women's K2 1000 - Madeleine Schmidt and Andreanne Langlois
U23 K2 Women 200 - Andreanne Langlois and Lissa Bissonnette
U23 C2 Men 200 - Antoine Meunier and Ben Tardioli

Full Canadian results
Full race results
YouTube Videos

Gymnastics

The Canadian Gymnastics Championships were held in Ottawa. Performance videos are available to view on Gymnastics Canada YouTube channel by clicking here.

Men's Gymnastics Champions:
Senior Floor - Robert Watson
Senior High Bar - René Cournoyer
Senior Parallel Bars - Jayd Lukenchuk
Senior Pommel Horse - Anderson Loran
Senior Rings - Kevin Lytwyn
Senior Vault - Brandon O'Neill
Senior All Around - Hugh Smith

Women's Gymnastics Champions:
Senior Floor - Gabriella Douglas
Senior Uneven Bars - Kaitlyn Hofland
Senior Beam - Ellie Black
Senior Vault - Megan Chant
Senior All Around - Ellie Black (video beam)

Senior Trampoline Champions:
Jason Burnett (video)
Samantha Sendel (video)

Judo World Masters in Russia

Antoine Valois-Fortier was disappointed with his 5th place finish but he was rewarded with the Ippon of the day. Click here to see it. His bronze medal match is at the 4:40 mark of this video.

Kelita Zupancic won the silver medal in the 70kg category. You can see her final match at the 1:26:00 mark by clicking here.

CanoeKayak Slalom Canada National Team

Team trials were held this past weekend in Minden, Ontario. More info and results.

Senior Men's K1
Five-time Olympian David Ford (Elite, National)
Ben Hayward (Elite, National, C2 Elite)
John Hastings (Elite, National)

Senior Women's K1
Jessica Groeneveld (Elite, National)
Thea Froehlich (National)

Senior Men's C1
Cameron Smedley (Elite, National, U23, C2 Elite)

Senior Women's C1
Haley Daniels (Elite, National and U23)
Alexandra McGee (National and U23)

The full list can be found here.

Heartbeat Highlights

Here are some of the highlights from the past week in amateur sports.

Caroline Calvé won the Ladies' Snowboard Parallel Slalom World Cup race in Moscow. Click here for the race video. She posted a photo on Twitter of herself and the pilot on her way home with the very large trophy she won. That's quite the carry-on!

Canada's moguls team dominated this past weekend with 4 of the 6 podium spots. Mikaël Kingsbury and Audrey Robichaud won the men's and women's moguls competitions in Japan. Alexandre Bilodeau and Chloé Dufour-Lapointe joined them on the podiums, both in third place. Click here for the men's highlights and here for the women's.

Canada didn't fare as well in the dual moguls the next day with one podium performance. Alexandre Bilodeau finished second. Click here for the race video.

Alex Harvey made Canadian history by winning the bronze medal in the 1.5km sprint at the Nordic Skiing World Championships. It was the first podium ever for a Canadian in an individual event. Click here to watch the final, semi and quarter final. Cliquez ici pour lire un reportage en français avec une entrevue avec Alex. In the relay, Alex and Devon Kershaw were 0.03 seconds from the podium in the relay.


Canada's Luge team comprising of Alex Gough, Sam Edney and doubles Tristan Walker and Justin Snith won bronze in the team relay event at the Sochi World Cup finishing a successful season that is showing great promise leading into the Olympics next year.

After being 26th in the downhill portion of the Super Combined, Marie-Michelle Gagnon was second in the slalom to finish a personal best 5th overall.

It wasn't a stellar performance by our Men's Alpine Ski team at Garmish, but if you love to watch skiing, CBC have full race videos on their website. Click here.

If you love speed skating, click here to watch CBC's coverage of the World All-Round Championships.

Chris Williamson with guide Robin Féry won the first gold medal for Canada at the IPC Alpine World Skiing Championships in Molina, Italy by winning the Super Combined Visually Impaired. You can view the highlights here. Canada has nine medals so far at the Championships with two days to go.

The Para-Nordic World Championships are starting today and is being streamed live online here with race videos also available on the YouTube Channel.  Brian McKeever and guide Eric Carleton started the championships strongly for Canada by winning the Visually Impaired Cross-Country Classic Sprints. Click here for the race video.

With spring around the corner, many winter sports are ending while summer sports have started their seasons. Bobsleigh and skeleton finished their seasons last week. Click here to read Team Spring's season review and click here to read Melissa Hollingsworth's thoughts on her season.

At the FINA Diving Grand Prix in Germany, sisters Carol-Ann and Pamela Ware won the bronze medal in the 10m synchronized event.

The women's team pursuit won the bronze medal at the UCI World Track Cycling Championships. 2012 Olympic bronze medallists Gillian Carleton and Jasmin Glaesser teamed up with Olympic alternate Laura Brown to repeat their 3rd place finish.

Antoine Valois-Fortier won another bronze medal at the Judo Düsseldorf Grand Prix. For fans of judo, you can watch Day 1 coverage here and Day 2 here. I looked on the videos for Antoine's match but didn't find it. The other bronze medal match in his weight category is at the beginning of the Day 2 video.

Finally, click here to watch Objectif Sotchi, Radio Canada's weekly show in french featuring Canadians on the road to Sochi. This week's episode includes Erik Guay, Chris Del Bosco (English interview with subtitles) and Sochi World Cup highlights, a bobsleigh recruitment test for Winnipeg Blue Bomber Pierre-Luc Labbé and a look back at Olympic gold and silver medallist in alpine skiing, Nancy Green.

Heartbeat Highlights

Here are some of our top results and video links in Olympic sports this past week.

The bobsleigh and skeleton season came to an end and what a season it was for Kaillie Humphries and Chelsea Valois who were third this week and finished the season with a podium in every race culminating with them winning the crystal globe for the overall World Cup title. Click here for a beautiful photo that Kaillie posted with the crystal globes.

Lyndon Rush and Jesse Lumsden finished their season with the crystal globe as well after a 4th place finish at the Sochi test event. Read more about their feat here.

Click here for bobsleigh and skeleton race videos.

Finishing the season so successfully at the Sochi track, hopefully they take this energy to the Olympics next year.

Speaking of the 2014 Olympics, two athletes punched their ticket to the Games with their podiums on the weekend in Sochi.

Mikaël Kingsbury won the moguls event at the Sochi test event. This win combined with his season's results have confirmed his place on Team Canada for 2014. It was also a great day for Philippe Marquis who joined him on the podium in 3rd.  Click here for video highlights. Click here for Philippe's French blog post describing his experience.

Roz Groenewoud also cemented her spot on the Olympic team with a second place finish in the ski superpipe. Click here for video highlights. Keltie Hansen got her first podium of the season finishing third just behind Roz.  Mike Riddle also earned a podium finishing 3rd in the men's ski superpipe edging him one step closer to making the Olympic team. Here's the video highlights.

With training days cancelled in Sochi due to fog and too much snow, ski cross finally got under way with Kelsey Serwa and Marielle Thompson finishing 1-2 for Canada. Click here for the race video. The cancelled days made for pretty photos posted by Kelsey (click here) and Chris Del Bosco (click here).

Chris also added a podium for Canada with a 2nd place finish. Click here for the race video.

Ariane Lavigne earned her first ever World Cup podium finishing 3rd in snowboard parallel giant slalom. Click here for the race video. The snowboard parallel slalom was cancelled due to warm weather.

In Judo, Kelita Zupancic won the gold medal at a World Cup in Budapest. Click here for the video. Antoine Valois-Fortier took the bronze. You can read more here.