Valley athletes bringing home Games hardware

Bow Valley Athletes are cleaning up at the Canada Winter Games, including a record-setting four gold medal performance by biathlete Scott Gow.

Gow was golden in the men’s 15-km, 12.5-km pursuit, 10-km sprint and 3x7.5-km relay, as the Albertans won all 10 medals in the men’s event.

His record-setting medal in the relay proved to be his hardest. Teammates Aaron Gilmour and Stuart Harden spotted Team Alberta with a lead. After holding the Alberta advantage into the first shooting range, he missed two prone shots, opening the door for Quebec’s Vincent Blais.

The Quebec team grabbed the lead, but Blais entered the wrong shooting lane in his second trip to the range. Gow responded by shooting clean and skied to victory in a time of 59:33.

“The fun didn’t last long and that became serious pretty quick,” said Gow. “This was a great week. To be able to sweep the medals and then get to the top of the podium with each of my teammates together on the final day is awesome.”

The women’s biathlon relay team, which includes Canmorites Emma Lunder and Emma Lodge, won the silver in the 3x6-km relay.

The cross-country athletes took over from where the biathletes left off, beginning with Kevin Sandau winning the gold in the 10-km skate sprint in a time of 22:09.40

“I was hoping for the gold today coming in so that was a good race today,” said the 22-year-old Sandau. “This is a short distance for me, but this was a challenging course with not many downhills so I really had to push myself.”

Canmore’s Jesse Cockney picked up the bronze in 22:13.60. His father won two gold medals in cross-country skiing at the 1975 Canada Winter Games.

“First Canada Games race and I have my first medal so I’m feeling good,” said Cockney. “It is really cool that I have a Canada Games medal in the same sport as my dad 36 years later. Hopefully by the end of the week I can top his medal count, but either way it is an exciting week for our family.”

Banff’s Heidi Widmer won the bronze in the 7.5-km skate ski race with a time of 20:13.40, just ahead of Canmore’s Annika Hicks. Emily Nishikawa, who can often be found training in Canmore, won the race with a time of 19:37.6.

The province is expected to fair well as the cross-country races continue throughout the week.

On the speed skating track, Marika Nadal was the province’s top racer in the women’s 500 m and 1,500 m, finishing 17th and 12th respectively.

Canmore’s Luke Philp was a member of Alberta’s bronze medal winning hockey team.

Bow Valley residents should also keep an eye on the Judo ring later this week, as Erin Morgan will represent the province on Thursday while figure skater Meg Ohsada will also compete for Team Alberta later this week.