A great time for Manitoba athletes at Canada Winter Games By: Joshua Frey-Sam Posted: 7:00 PM CST Monday, Mar. 6, 2023

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Team Manitoba athletes will look back fondly at their last two weeks at the 2023 Canada Winter Games in Prince Edward Island.

A dominant individual effort on the speedskating oval, an unrelenting display of pin-point accuracy in archery and a record-setting program in figure skating were just some of the fruits of the team’s labour over the last four years.

Manitoba finished the 16-day national multi-sport event Sunday with 19 medals — six gold, six silver and seven bronze — to place seventh overall among the 13 participating provinces and territories.

The cumulative performance fell short of the 25-medal output it produced in Red Deer, Alta., (2019) and Halifax (2011), but was greater than the 15 medals it captured in Prince George, B.C., in 2015.

“It’s been a great two-and-a half weeks,” Drew Todd, Team Manitoba’s chef de mission, said Monday. “A really positive experience overall.

“A lot of these athletes haven’t had the opportunity to do a national-level competition in a very long time, obviously with the (COVID-19) pandemic. Performance-wise, I wouldn’t say we were exactly where we wanted to be, but it wasn’t exactly a disaster, either.”

Manitoba sent 207 athletes to Atlantic Canada to compete against the country’s best across 19 sports. In Week 1, competitors in long-track speed skating and fencing grabbed the spotlight, while those in figure skating and archery took centre stage in Week 2.

While the province’s first podium visit belonged to Winnipeggers Victoria Lee and Grace Qi (who captured a silver medal in table tennis), Winnipeg-born long-track speed skater Sofia Bieber was the undisputed star of the Manitoba contingent during the opening week.

Before the Games, the 17-year-old won gold in Quebec City at the Canadian junior championships in January and then represented the Maple Leaf at the world junior championships in Inzell, Germany. During that time, it was announced Bieber would be Manitoba’s flag bearer for the P.E.I. opening ceremonies.

Bieber had previously said the demanding travel schedule left her skating on fumes at times, however, it clearly didn’t slow her down: in five events, she finished with three golds and two silvers.

That set the stage for Manitoba’s archery team during the second week, which recorded a medal in every event, claiming six total medals. Chyler Sanders and Ryder Wilson led the way with two medals apiece en route to being selected as co-flag bearers for the closing ceremonies.

“My experience at the Games has been amazing with all the pin-trading and meeting other athletes around Canada in different sports, as well as our own,” said Sanders, 18. “It’s just been amazing and so much fun hanging out and playing games.”

“My experience at the Games has been amazing with all the pin-trading and meeting other athletes around Canada in different sports, as well as our own.”–Chyler Sanders

Added Wilson, 16: “I had lots of fun during the week. I found that we had to wake up really early for the archery events, like 5:30 each morning. So, it was really tough, (I was) pretty tired most of the week, but I did have lots of fun.”

Sanders earned gold in the women’s compound individual event, while Wilson prevailed in men’s recurve individual competition.

Their success was not to be outdone by Julia Xiao (Oakville) and Keith Lau (Winnipeg). The duo captured a gold medal in the figure skating pairs pre-novice mix event. The pair’s cumulative score of 105.53 set a Canadian record for the event.

Todd said Team ‘Toba pride was evident throughout the games — and lasting memories were made by individuals whose athletic careers are only just beginning.

“The experience isn’t just for the handful of athletes that take home hardware. It’s the learning about building a team, building a camaraderie, beyond your own sport, and I think that’s the kind attitude that athletes can take forward as they get into more multi-sport teams — getting on that Olympic, Paralympic pathway,” he said.

“I think we learned a lot about what we can do better and what we can prove as a system and I think it gives us a good target to shoot for, for 2027.”

The 2025 Summer Games will take place in St. John’s, N.L.

jfreysam@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @jfreysam