Team Canada’s top moments from the 2022-23 winter season: snow sports
We’ve arrived at the end of an incredible season for Team Canada’s stars of ice and snow.
Over the last six months, we have seen history happen before our eyes. We have watched wonderful world championship performances. We have been introduced to athletes ready to make their mark on the road to the next Olympic Winter Games at Milano Cortina 2026.
Here’s a look back at some of the most magical moments on snow from the 2022-23 season. You can check out Team Canada’s season highlights on ice here.
Alpine Skiing: Never count out Canadians on the White Circus
With his performances at Beijing 2022, Jack Crawford announced that Canadian alpine skiers could compete with the best in the world. He followed up with his best season ever, highlighted by his gold medal in the super-G at the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in February. Crawford also stood on three World Cup podiums in the downhill to finish the season ranked fifth overall in the discipline.
But he wasn’t alone in making his breakthrough. Laurence St-Germain stunned the GOAT of slalom skiing when she claimed the title of world champion in that event. Valérie Grenier’s first ever World Cup podium made her the first Canadian in 49 years to win a women’s giant slalom race. She showed it wasn’t a fluke with her third-place finish at the World Cup Finals. She also helped Canada win bronze in the team parallel event at the world championships.
Cameron Alexander proved he wasn’t a one-trick pony, adding world championship bronze in the downhill to his breakout World Cup win from a year earlier.
While the season marked the farewell tour for Marie-Michèle Gagnon after more than 270 World Cup starts, the above achievements show there are rising stars more than ready for the spotlight.
Freestyle Skiing: Frenzy of Canadian success
The king of moguls lived up to his reputation once again this season. Mikaël Kingsbury won six gold and five silver medals in his 12 World Cup starts. That impressive effort earned him three Crystal Globes as the overall champion of moguls, dual moguls, and both disciplines combined. That brings his career collection of Crystal Globes up to 24, the most ever by a freestyle skier. He now has 80 career individual World Cup wins. At the FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships, the prolific athlete won both the moguls and dual moguls, a feat he achieved for the third straight time. The best moguls skier of all time doesn’t just break records — he also makes his marks very hard to beat.
Megan Oldham was a double medallist at the worlds, winning slopestyle silver and big air bronze. That came after her history-making moment at the X Games at the end of January. She pushed significant progression when she became the first woman to land a triple cork in a ski or snowboard competition. Her 1440 (three flips and four off-axis rotations) earned her the first perfect score of 50 for a woman in big air at the X Games. She also won X Games gold in slopestyle.
Canada also had success in the halfpipe at the world championships. Brendan Mackay became world champion in the men’s event while Rachael Karker added world bronze to her Olympic bronze. Karker also won the first Crystal Globe of her career after standing on four World Cup podiums. That increased her streak to 12 straight podiums on the circuit, dating back to 2019.
Aerialist Marion Thénault had the best season of her young career. She reached the podium in four of her six World Cup starts and finished third in the overall standings. She was also knocking on the door of the world championship podium, placing fourth.
The Canadian ski cross team said goodbye to veteran Brady Leman, who retired at the end of the World Cup season. The 2018 Olympic champion ended his career on Canadian snow in Craigleith, Ontario. In front of family and friends, he skied to victory in his last ever race. The future of Canadian ski cross is in good hands, however, as 24-year-old Reece Howden won the discipline’s Crystal Globe after reaching the podium seven times this season, including three victories. Not to mention the amazing Marielle Thompson who finished in the top three of the overall standings for the seventh straight time.
Ski Jumping: Canadian women can (ski) jump
It had been decades since the maple leaf was so frequently seen on international ski jumping podiums as it was this past season.
For a few weeks, it felt like every time Alexandria Loutitt competed, she was achieving a new first. The first Canadian woman to win a World Cup ski jumping event. The first Canadian woman to win a world junior title in ski jumping. The first Canadian to become world champion in ski jumping. Before the season wrapped, she stood on one more World Cup podium and jumped further than any Canadian – male or female – before her, soaring 225 metres in the first ever women’s ski flying competition.
Loutitt wasn’t alone in her exploits. Teammate Abigail Strate made her own breakthrough with her first career World Cup podium. Canada’s dynamic duo are still only 19 and 22, so the sky’s the limit as they gain even more experience.
Snowboard: We’re soaring, flying
Mark McMorris didn’t compete a lot this season, but he made the most of his appearance at the X Games. He won slopestyle gold in Aspen for his 22nd career Winter X Games medal. That allowed him to stand alone as the most decorated athlete in the history of the Winter X Games.
It was also in Aspen that Laurie Blouin became the first woman to land a 1260 triple cab underflip in snowboard. Her breakthrough achievement came just a few minutes after a competitor landed the first triple underflip in women’s snowboard big air. Just like Megan Oldham in freestyle skiing, Blouin played a big part in pushing women’s snowboarding to another level this year.
Another woman who attracted a lot of attention this season was Elizabeth Hosking. The 21-year-old won Canada’s first ever world championship medal in women’s snowboard halfpipe when she claimed the silver medal.
Cross-Country Skiing: Just the start of something good
The Canadian cross-country skiing team may be young, but with what they achieved this season, that bodes well for the future. At the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, Antoine Cyr and Graham Ritchie, both 24, finished fourth in the team sprint free. Following their fifth place in the team sprint classic at Beijing 2022, these two promising skiers are poised to take that next step onto the podium.
They also teamed up with 19-year-old Xavier McKeever and 22-year-old Olivier Léveillé to finish fifth in the men’s 4x10km relay. It was Canada’s best result in the men’s relay at the world championships since 2009 when Alex Harvey was the young upstart.
Individually, Cyr amassed four top-10 finishes during the World Cup season, highlighted by a career-best fourth in a 15km mass start race in January when he was just a tenth of a second away from a medal.
Biathlon: Shooting for the breakthroughs
This season, Emma Lunder did things we haven’t seen from a Canadian woman biathlete in long while. At the season opening World Cup in Kontiolahti, Finland, she placed a career-best fourth in the 7.5km sprint. A day later, she was fifth in the 10km pursuit. Before the season was done, she had recorded another fifth-place finish, this time in the 15km individual in Oestersund, Sweden in early March. In between those World Cup breakthroughs, Lunder finished seventh in the 12.5km mass start, her first solo top 10 performance at the IBU World Championships.
