Canadians win multiple speed skating medals.

Canadian Press - HEERENVEEN, The Netherlands — Denny Morrison of Fort St. John., B.C., and Christine Nesbitt of London, Ont., both captured silver medals Sunday in a World Cup long-track speed-skating competition.

Ottawa’s Kristina Groves was fifth, two spots ahead of Winnipeg’s Shannon Rempel. Cindy Klassen, also of Winnipeg, was eighth while Brittany Schussler of Winnipeg was 20th.

Nesbitt was paired with Anni Friesinger for the first time in her career. In the second half of the race, Nesbitt slipped touching the ice with her hands but recovered with a strong last lap. “It was very exciting to be paired with Anni,” said Nesbitt. “Ever since I’ve started getting on the podium she’s always been one spot ahead of me.

“So I knew it was an opportunity to have a positive experience. And I had a really good race despite the slip. I don’t think it cost me the gold but it’s hard to tell. I’ve never beaten her in the 1,000.”

The Canadian team of Nesbitt, Klassen and Schussler was second in the 2,400-metre pursuit.

American Shani Davis won the men’s 1,000-metre event with Morrison second. Kyou-Hyuk Lee of South Korea was third while Francois-Olivier Roberge of St-Nicholas, Que., was 15th.

Morrison, Arne Dankers of Calgary and Justin Warsylewicz of Regina placed second in the men’s 3,200-metre pursuit.

Kristina Groves raced to a silver medal in the 1,500 metres while Christine Nesbitt of earned the bronze. “I’m really pleased with how I skated, it was a lot better than last in week in Russia,” said Groves, who captured her third medal this season at the distance. “I was able to change a few things that I didn’t do as well and I had a much better rhythm and felt lighter.”

Nesbitt leads the discipline standings with 350 points. Groves is second with 290 followed by Friesinger with 280.

Canada’s Janyk wins downhill world cup.

Canadian Press - ASPEN, Colo. — Britt Janyk of Whistler, B.C., skied into an exclusive group of Canadian women Saturday when she captured gold in a World Cup downhill.

Janyk raced down the Ruthie’s Run course in one minute 14.17 seconds for her first World Cup victory, becoming the first Canadian woman to capture a World Cup downhill title since Kate Pace-Lindsay won in 1993. The only other Canadian women to have won World Cup downhills are Laurie Graham, Gerry Sorensen and Nancy Greene.

“It feels absolutely amazing and I’m so proud to be a part of that group,” Janyk said in a conference call. “I walked the course to inspect it and started smiling,” Janyk said. “It was just like I was used to — West Coast snow, wet with powder mixed in. I knew I would have a good time and looked forward to pushing out of the start gate.”

Janyk’s victory comes on the heels of the bronze medal she won a week earlier in the downhill at Lake Louise, Alta., her first podium performance in the discipline. “That was a huge step for me especially in downhill, to step onto that podium,” Janyk said. “I was actually quite nervous coming into this weekend because I really raised the bar for myself and so any day I’m not on the podium I’m going to think about what I did or where I could have done better.”

Janyk’s gold puts the Canadian ski team’s total at three medals on the season — two of them from the 27-year-old skier. The team’s goal for the season is 14. Kelly VanderBeek of Kitchener, Ont., was sixth Saturday.

Heinzpeter Platter, the speed coach for the Canadian women’s team, said the rough conditions helped his skiers. “We had great training in the spring in Whistler, and we prepared when weather conditions were bad, we were still training, and today it helped us,” said Platter. “We pushed the girls to the limits and today, the conditions were not so perfect . . . that’s why our girls are on the top now.”

More than half the field was unable to complete the race run in a light snow. Only 30 of the 56 skiers finished. Race officials called off the race before 19 skiers were able to ski the course because of fog and poor visibility. Four other skiers chose not to start.

MICHELLE KELLY WINS BACK-TO-BACK GOLD AT VIESSMANN WORLD CUP SKELETON EVENT IN PARK CITY.

PARK CITY, UTAH — Canada’s Michelle Kelly is officially back! The 33-year-old Fort St. John, B.C. native followed a golden track to her second consecutive trip to the World Cup podium – this time on the Olympic Track in Park City, Utah on Thursday.

“Neither of my runs today were perfect,” said Kelly despite beating the field by more than half of a second after posting a two-run time of one minute 40.43 seconds, which is miles ahead in the sport of skeleton. “I stayed calm during my second run, but made some mistakes in the bottom half of the track so I was a bit surprised I finished where I did. I can’t complain though and I’ll take it.”

With a nagging shoulder injury that she had surgery on this summer, combined with a new outlook on the sport after falling short of qualifying for the 2006 Canadian Olympic Team, podium results have been a long-time coming since Kelly was on top of the world in 2003 where she was the first woman to win the World Championships and Overall World Cup title in the same year.

“I think the shoulder surgery this summer, along with a number of other things I had keeping me busy outside of sport really allowed me to put things into perspective,” said Kelly. “Getting the surgery done gave me a fresh outlook and allowed me to just go out and have fun again which gave me the confidence to compete with the best sliders. I now know that it is a privilege and I’m sliding each week to have fun. Not because I have to be here. That to me is the difference.”

With Kelly leading the way, the Canadian women were all stacked in the top-five in Park City. Carla Pavan, of Lethbridge, Alta., refocused and narrowly missed the podium finishing fourth. Sliding on the tail of Pavan was teammate, and 2006 Olympic bronze medallist, Mellisa Hollingsworth, whose podium streak ended at nine. The 27-year-old Eckville, Alta., who was the first skeleton athlete in the world to podium in all eight races in one season in 2006, finished fifth on Thursday.

“Our team is so strong and so supportive of each other that I feel honoured knowing that I was able to make the Canadian Skeleton Team,” said Kelly, who finished third Overall on the World Cup last season. “Our program is strong, and we have a number of great sliders and an awesome team which makes things fun.”

Meanwhile, Calgary’s Jon Montgomery and Paul Boehm led the Canadian men’s charge with a 5th and 9th place respectively.

Canada’s Blythe Hartley wins gold at International Invitational diving competition.

MONTREAL – Blythe Hartley of Calgary competed for the first time since May and won the gold medal Thursday on women’s three-metre open the 12-country CAMO International Invitational diving competition being held this week at the Claude-Robillard Centre.

“I’m very happy with today’s performance,” said Hartley, who took a break this spring and summer and returned training in September. “I didn’t have any expectations here. I was little nervous and I just wanted to get the cobwebs out. It went well so I’m pleased.”

The competition is also a qualifying meet for the FINA World Cup next March.

Alexandre Despatie of Laval, Que., won two gold medals Friday. Despatie led Canada to a medal sweep in the three-metre solo competition and added a win in synchronized three-metre with partner Arturo Miranda of Pointe-Claire, Que. Eric Sehn of Edmonton was second and Reuben Ross of Pointe-Claire, Que., third.

“It was a really good performance,” said Miranda. “We were feeling really tired but we pushed through it and it paid off in the end. Right now we’re just training as hard as we can to make our individual dives better."

Lueders earns second bobsled bronze.

CBC Sports - He may be struggling in his strongest event but that hasn’t stopped Canada’s Pierre Lueders from collecting more hardware in the men’s four-man bobsled competition.

Lueders, along with teammates Ken Kotyk, Lascelles Brown and Justin Kripps earned their second consecutive bronze medal at the bobsled World Cup in Park Park City, Utah, Saturday night. “We’ve made big strides in the four-man, which is obvious,” Lueders said following his bronze-medal win in Calgary last week.

“Last year we were quite a ways back, and it’s not very often you find 25 hundredths in one season, so we’re way beyond that and we’re right in the mix now, which is pretty good."

The team of driver Lyndon Rush, Dan Humphries, Chris Le Bihan and Nathan Cross led the Canada 2 sled to a seventh-place finish.

On the women’s side, the top two German sleds captured gold and silver.

Calgary’s Helen Upperton joined Olympic teammate, Heather Moyse of Summerside, P.E.I., to finish fourth. Upperton and Moyse also ended up in fourth place at the 2006 Torino Olympics. “You don’t even understand how badly we’re tired of fourth place,” said Upperton, who notched her second World Cup victory at the season-opener one week ago in Calgary.

Calgary’s Kaillie Humphries and Shelly-Ann Brown, of Pickering, Ont., drove their Canada 2 sled into sixth spot on the Olympic Track. Lisa Szabon, of Nanton, Alta., and Jenni Hucul, of Saskatoon, were the final Canadian team to crack the top-10 with an eighth place finish.

Lueders failed in his attempt to reach the podium in the two-man even for the first time this season.

Canadian men’s team finishes 13th at World Cup biathlon event.

HOCHFILZEN, Austria—Jean-Philippe LeGuellec of Shannon, Que., led Canada to a 13th-place finish in a World Cup biathlon team relay Sunday. LeGuellec, 22, combined with Ottawa’s Robin Clegg, Edmonton’s Jaime Robb, and Regina’s Scott Perras to finish 13th in the 23-country field, seven minutes 32.6 seconds behind the dominant Norwegians.

“This was probably one of our best relays in years with a world-class field,” said Clegg. “We had a goal of reaching the top-15 so we definitely accomplished that and we didn’t’ shoot particularly well today so we are pretty happy.”

The relay consists of each athlete skiing the 2.5-kilometre track three times. Competitors enter the shooting range after each loop and shoot once prone and once standing.

With a combination of strong skiing and sharp shooting, LeGuellec has the Canadians creeping their way back into contention in men’s biathlon. “J.P. is an exceptional talent,” Clegg said of his teammate, who finished in the top portion of the pack after qualifying for his first men’s pursuit race which was staged Saturday. “I think in a short period of time the results we are talking about this week for J.P. are going to be poor performances in the near future.”

Baumann makes case for funding; former swimmer seeks $30-million boost.

JAMES CHRISTIE - Olympic swimming legend Alex Baumann got to dive in with the federal financial sharks in Ottawa as he presented the Canadian Olympic Committee's case for a $30-million inclusion in the next federal budget to help athletes get onto the medal podium in the Summer Olympics.

But waiting for the feds to make a greater commitment to sport in the budget - Baumann anticipates it in February - the double gold medalist may have to hold his breath longer than he ever did in the pool.

"They heard our case and they asked questions about how and where such money would be spent, but you get your time to speak, then there's someone asking money for transport and someone asking money for culture," said Baumann, who heads up the Road to Excellence program. It's a scheme that's supposed to parallel the Own the Podium program, which is designed to help winter sports try to put athletes on medal podiums in Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010.

Baumann, who won gold medals and set world records at the Los Angeles Games in 1984, was lured by the COC to come back from Australia, where he had headed sport development in Queensland. He was expecting there would be money to run the programs to enhance Canadian performances and give athletes more access to sport science, testing, coaching and even cutting-edge top-secret technology.

Then, sport didn't get a mention in the last budget. The feds said they were already contributing to sport through athlete-assistance programs at Sport Canada, core funding for sport organizations and massive outlays related to winter sport and the Vancouver Olympics.

"It's frustrating," Baumann said. "They're forgetting there are twice as many summer sports as there are winter sports.

"I think they understand what we're saying. The critical point is to link the health of Canadians with active lifestyles - it would take a burden off the health budget if more Canadians were involved in sport. And one of the links that accomplishes that is the link of high-performance athletes getting on the podium. Every time that happens, the number of kids involved in physical activity goes up."

The COC's written submission to the finance committee says the Road to Excellence goals are a 16th-place finish in medals at the Beijing Summer Olympics next year, rising to 12th place at London in 2012. Paralympian athletes have a medals target of being in the top five countries in 2008 and 2012.

The COC pointed to the 24 medals Winter Olympians brought home from Turin in 2006 after the $22-million-a-year Own the Podium program kicked in. They do their well-funded things on ice and snow, but the summer athletes feel left in the cold.

"It is frustrating, but there's still a number of things we can do," Baumann said. "We'll work at creating a positive relationship between the sponsors and the COC, and we have to make some decisions on prioritizing the $12-million we do have from Sport Canada and the COC and the province of British Columbia. We'll have to make plans for what we have.

"We're trying to address the inequity of summer sport. There is potential here, but we need to focus and have the adequate resources to achieve the outcome."