Heartbeat Highlights

Here are the highlights in amateur sports during the past week.

Track & Field

Special shout-out to Olympic bronze medallist Derek Drouin who broke the Canadian indoor record while winning the Division 1 NCAA high jump with a jump of 2.35m (he won bronze with a jump of 2.29m). Read more here and see interview here. click here for other Canadian results.

Videos for the CIS Indoor Track & Field Championships are here and results list here.

Freestyle Skiing World Championships

Click here for Saturday's rebroadcast of CBC Sportsweekend's coverage of freestyle skiing and here for Sunday's.

The Freestyle Skiing World Championships wrapped up yesterday with Canada winning 10 medals.

Yesterday, on the 1 year anniversary of Nik Zoricic's death in a ski-cross race, Marielle Thompson won the silver medal in ski-cross dedicating her result to Nik. Click here for the video. The men did not fare as well perhaps affected by the memory, especially with Brady Leman's semi-final race being delayed by a crash.

Kaya Turski won the gold medal in Slopestyle followed by Dara Howell for a Canada 1-2. Click here for the video.

The men's moguls competitions saw Canada win gold and silver twice. Mikaël Kingsbury won gold in moguls and silver in dual moguls. Alex Bilodeau won gold in dual moguls and silver in moguls. His podium performance in the moguls assured him a spot on the 2014 Olympic team (Mikaël had previously qualified). Click here for the Men's moguls and here for the dual moguls.

Chloe Dufour-Lapointe won gold in the dual moguls while sister Justine won the bronze in the women's moguls. Click here for dual moguls and here for ladies' moguls.

Travis Gerrits punched his ticket to Sochi 2014 by winning the silver medal in the aerials event. Click here for video highlights.

Click here to browse CBC Sports's ski videos.

Snowboard World Cup

Dominique Maltais won the Snowboard Cross event in Arosa, Switzerland with Maelle Ricker joining her on the podium. Click here to see the race.

Matthew Morison won the silver in Snowboard Parallel Giant Slalom in Arosa. He started the second run 0.38 seconds behind but made the final very exciting. Click here for the video. Caroline Calvé captured the bronze in the same event. Click here for the video.

Short Track Speed Skating World Championships

Click here for rebroadcast of CBC Sportsweekend's Saturday coverage of short track and here for Sunday's.

Canada's short track speed skating relay team of Charles Hamelin, Michael Gilday, Olivier Jean and Charles Cournoyer won gold in the 5000m relay in Debrecen, Hungary. Gilday had the "save of the century" just before the 5:30 mark of the race. There is no replay at the end, so you may want to rewind during the race to see it again. Click here for the video.

The women's relay of Marianne St-Gelais, Marie-Ève Drolet, Valérie Maltais and Jessica Hewitt won the bronze in the 3000m relay. Click here for the video.

Marianne St-Gelais won silver in the 3000m final. Click here for the video.

Charles Hamelin won bronze in the men's 3000m (video) and 1000m races (video).

Long Track Speed Skating World Cup

I have not found videos of the long track speed skating. Christine Nesbitt won the gold in the 1000m and bronze in the 1500m. Ivanie Blondin won the silver in the mass start.

Curling

Northern Ontario's team of Brad Jacobs, Ryan Fry, E.J. Harden and Ryan Harden won the Brier and will represent Canada at the World Championships in Victoria March 30th-April 7th.

Finally, Objectif Sotchi's weekend broadcast can be watched 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

The Heartbeat is my weekly newsletter detailing which upcoming events are being held in Canada and which events are being televised or streamed on the internet.

Heartbeat Highlights is a review of those events which will include outstanding results and links to videos of those great performances for those who may not have been able to see the events live.

It was another stellar weekend for our Canadian athletes.

Davis Cup Tennis - Vancouver

Canada's Davis Cup tennis team made history on the weekend beating #1 Seeded Spain to reach the Elite 8 in the Davis Cup for the first time. If you missed it, you can view the highlights from day 1 by clicking here, the doubles highlights here and the day 3 video highlights is here.

Canada will host Italy in the quarter finals April 5-7th. City to be determined.

Summary: Canada 3 - 2 Spain
Milos Raonic def. Albert Ramos 6-7(5) 6-4 6-4 6-4
Frank Dancevic def.  Marcel Granollers 6-1 6-2 6-2
Marc Lopez/Marcel Granollers def. Daniel Nestor/Vasek Pospisil 4-6 6-4 6-7(4) 6-3 6-2
Milos Raonic def. Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 6-3 6-4 6-2
Albert Ramos def. Frank Dancevic 7-5 6-4

Luge World Championships - Whistler

You can view competitions by clicking here and then clicking on the link in the schedule for each event.

Summary:
3rd Women's Event:  Alex Gough
2nd Team Event: Alex Gough, Sam Edney, Justin Snith, Tristan Walker
1st U23 Doubles: Justin Snith, Tristan Walker (4th overall)
5th Men's Event: Sam Edney

To read Luge Canada's summary report, click here. To read Eric MacKenzie's Canadian Press report, click here.

Bobsleigh Skeleton World Championships

The World Championships for Bobsleigh and Skeleton have been held during the past two weekends. Click here for the Bobsleigh Skeleton TV YouTube channel where they have every heat from each event posted. Last weekend, Kaillie Humphries repeated as World Champion with new partner Chelsea Valois.

This weekend was the skeleton and 4 man-bobsleigh competitions.

The highlight for Canada was Sarah Reid who won bronze in the women's skeleton. Click the links for heat 1, heat 2, heat 3 and heat 4 and highlights.

Snowboard Cross World Cup

Blue Mountain Resort in Collingwood was host to the Snowboard Cross World Cup this past weekend. Thanks to CBC Sportsweekend for the telecast.

Men's: 1st Chris Robanske
Click here to view the exciting men's final.

Women's: 2nd Dominique Maltais
Click here to view the women's final that also included Maëlle Ricker.

Short Track Speed Skating

Charles Hamelin has shown that he will be the one to beat next year with a double win at the Sochi test event.

1st Charles Hamelin 500m (Click here for video)
1st Charles Hamelin 1000m
2nd Women's 3000mRelay

FIS World Cup - Deer Valley

Moguls
1st Mikaël Kingsbury (19th consecutive podium)
2nd Alex Bilodeau
Click here for video.

As a sidenote, Sportsnet is televising last weekend's Calgary World Cup today and tomorrow. Check your local listing here.

Dual Moguls

1st Alex Bilodeau
Click here for video of men's final.

2nd Justine Dufour-Lapointe
Click here for video of women's final.

Aerials

2nd Travis Gerrits
Click here or here for video.

FIS Cross-Country World Cup

Just over one year to the 2014 Olympics, the cross-country World Cup was held in the host city, Sochi.

Click here for video highlight. Click here for Haywood Race Report.

Women's relay 3rd Dasha Gaizova and Perianne Jones

FIS Ski-Cross World Cup

2nd: Tristan Tafel
Click here for race video with a very exciting finish.

Sportsnet is replaying the Ski-Cross action today. Click here for local listings.

Water-Polo World Championships Qualifying

Canada's men's and women's teams competed in Calgary this past weekend in the hopes of qualifying for the World Championships. Both teams were successful. Click here to read more.

Objectif Sochi 

Whether you speak french or not, Objectif Sochi which airs on the french CBC network on Saturday afternoons is worth watching. There are some bilingual features and lots of Olympic sport action. Click here to view past episodes.

Road To The Olympics

CBC have launched their Olympic website in anticipation to the 1 year to go to Sochi on Thursday.  Click here for athlete profiles, videos and news.

En Route Vers Les Olympiques 

Radio Canada a aussi lancé leur site Olympique. Plus infos.

Spencer O'Brien - World Champion

Spencer O'Brien won the FIS Snowboard Slopestyle World Championships in Quebec this past weekend which leads perfectly into this second post about my trip to Breckenridge for the Dew Tour last month where she finished second.

You can read my first post about my trip here. I wanted to highlight our Canadians in separate posts so I have "saved the best" for these posts - well at least in sentiment if not in photography.

Snowboard Slopestyle will make its Olympic debut in 2014. In order to qualify, snowboarders must earn points on the FIS snowboard circuit. Although most snowboarders prefer to compete on the professional tour that offer courses that are more challenging, athletes competed at Stoneham Mountain in Québec this past weekend for the FIS World Championships where Spencer repeated as World Champion. She is also the reigning world champion on the pro tour.

Next weekend, she will compete at the X Games in Aspen, Colorado with coverage on TSN2 starting on Thursday January 24th at 3pm. 

I was happy to get to see some Slopestyle action at the Dew Tour. After watching the superpipe competition, I did realize that slopestyle is not as spectator friendly live as the superpipe especially if you are inexperienced like I was. 

Wherever you are at the superpipe, you can hear the commentary and the announcement of the athletes. You can also see the whole run.

For slopestyle, you have to pick your spots. You can't see the whole run and unless you're at the bottom of the run, you can't hear the commentary (at least at the Dew Tour this year) which means you don't know who is coming (or when). 

My original plan for the semi-finals had been to walk up from the chalet after lunch to the bottom jump but they wouldn't let people climb up. We had to take the chair lift then walk down. Climbing back up to the superpipe afterwards did make me understand perhaps one of the reasons. It's not easy climbing a mountain at altitude! It was a quiet day, so the other reason of having traffic flow one way wasn't really a factor on this first day of competition.

By the time I took the chairlift (not having given myself enough time for it), I had missed the first run. I still managed to get a couple of great shots of Spencer. She would qualify for the final in fourth.

The next day, I watched the first run where I could see a jump leading to a rail feature which is unique to slopestyle.

After Spencer's first run, I kept walking down the mountain looking for other great spots for photos (and to try to see if I could get close enough to hear commentary). Unlike in superpipe where the skier has your attention for their whole run so that the gap between competitors doesn't seem very long, in slopestyle the gap seems longer because we only see a small part of their run. If you're underneath a jump, you don't know when they're coming so it can get tricky getting shots, but eventually you get used to knowing the approximate gap and knowing great spots to get photos.

I love the following shot contrasting Jamie Anderson against the blowing cloud, the side view of the jump and the man-made snow in the foreground.

The conditions were a lot different for the second run only twenty minutes later. The lighting was a lot darker as can be seen on this unedited shot. The above shots are unedited (except some cropping). The difference in the colour of the sky and brightness of the snow is obvious from the beautiful blue sky in her first run and the dark clouds on this photo. 

(I edited the following shots to brighten them). On her second run, Spencer unfortunately didn't land this jump cleanly.

She was still in the lead from the strength of her first run, but Jamie Anderson's second run ended up being the best on the day. Spencer finished second.

I would have loved to have talked to her and get her thoughts on this season and the next leading to the Olympics as well as the design on her snowboard. 

There was quite a crowd surrounding her with journalists interviewing her and kids waiting for autographs. I was happy to get a glance for this shot.

She may have been second on this day, but look for her to be at the top at the Olympics in Sochi.

Here's a video showing highlights from the Dew Tour competition. Spencer is highlighted starting at the 1:20 mark.

See More Videos at AlliSports.com Embed

Dew Tour - Breckenridge

Last month, I had the chance to catch some snowboard and freeski action at the Dew Tour in Breckenridge, Colorado.

Roz Groenewoud of Canada competes in Freeski Superpipe

The Dew Tour is the first qualifying event for the 2014 Sochi Olympics for halfpipe and slopestyle. Snowboard halfpipe was already an Olympic event, but for freeski halfpipe, freeski slopestyle and snowboard slopestyle, 2014 will see their debut.

Canada (unlike the US) is offering early qualification to freeski athletes who podium in two of five designated events (Dew Tour, X-Games (Copper WC for slopestyle), European X-Games-France, Sochi Test Event and World Championships) as well as a top 16 in either the Sochi Test Event or World Championships. Click here for full qualification process for freeski competitions. Click here for the Canadian snowboard qualification process.

For our Canadian athletes, the Dew Tour was especially important in their quest for Sochi 2014.

In my two days at the Dew Tour, I got to see the Men's Freeski and Snowboard Superpipe qualification, as well as the Women's Snowboard Slopestyle and Women's Freeski Superpipe finals.

I will write separate posts for the Men's Freeski and the Women's competitions highlighting the first qualifying podiums by our Canadians. This first post is an overview of the competition and showcases my favourite photos.

I started my first day by watching the Men's Freeski Superpipe competition from the bottom of the superpipe.

This view gave a great perspective of the full run. 

Matt Margetts

Mike Riddle

Noah Bowman

Mike Riddle

It was great to see the athletes' reactions at the end of their runs.

Matt Margetts

It was also the perfect place to be while waiting for the scores to be posted on the scoreboard as well as listen to the commentators during the runs and hear the interviews.

Mike Riddle

Canada was well represented with three men qualifying for the final:  Mike Riddle 1st, Justin Dorey 3rd and Matt Margetts 5th. 

After lunch, I managed to catch some of the semi-finals action for the Women's Slopestyle, including Spencer O'Brien:

I was quite happy with the photos I took of the freeski competition at the superpipe in the morning, but it would prove to be nothing compared to the photos I would get in the afternoon for the snowboard superpipe competition. Unfortunately there were no Canadians in this competition but it did include Olympic gold medallist Shaun White. 

When I arrived at the bottom of the superpipe, the sun was shining right above the pipe making photo taking from the bottom quite challenging. I decided to climb up the side of the superpipe so that the sun would be more behind me.

Although this didn't give me a perspective on the whole run, it made for some spectacular photos.

Starting with the best snowboarder in the world, I managed to catch a few good photos of Shaun White.

I didn't notice it at the time, but I was happy to see him wearing a Sarah Burke armband when I looked at my photos. She was definitely on my mind while I was at the Dew Tour.

Here are more of my favourite shots:

Benji Farrow

Louis Vito

Spencer Shaw

Watching the competition from the side of the superpipe was incredible to experience the speed and the sound of the snowboarders.

With the competition over, I walked back down to the chalet to meet my friends. On my way, I caught some practice action off a jump by some freeski competitors.

Alex Schlopy

I was happy to see some of this practice. Being a guest, I was on my friends' schedule. When they were done skiing and ready to go back to the cottage, I followed. This meant missing the Freeski Big Air competition that ended the day. It was still an amazing day and I couldn't wait for Day 2.

Stay tuned for my next posts that will showcase the women, including Canadians Roz Groenewoud who was third in the Freeski Superpipe and Spencer O'Brien who was second in the Snowboard Slopestyle. I will also post more photos and details about the Men's Freeski Superpipe where two Canadians Justin Dorey and Mike Riddle were on the podium.

My Daily ♥ #152: Winter X Games

Originally published on My Life Is Like A Song on January 28, 2012

I spent quite a bit of time this weekend watching the Winter X Games. The 2012 Winter X Games are dedicated to the memory of Sarah Burke. They prepared a beautiful video which includes Thursday night's glowstick descent down the halfpipe by her fellow Winter X Games competitors.

My daughter is thinking of writing her school speech about her. Sarah's impact has reached even further than skiing.