Gaskell, Harle win first gold medals of Canada Games

Elena Gaskell was only six when she tackled freestyle skiing for the first time.

Seven years later at age 13, she's a Canada Winter Games champion.

The 13-year-old from Vernon was the youngest of 23 female skiers in Saturday's slopestyle skiing event at Tabor Mountain Ski Resort and nailed down the top two runs in the eight-skier final to earn the first gold medal of the Winter Games.

"It's really exciting, I'm so proud to represent B.C. and just want to thank my parents and all the volunteers and all the helpers," said Gaskell. "Like a lot of the girls here I've been training since I was six, just going around hitting jumps and little boxes. I just a wanted to have fun and try my best and hopefully I would be able to perform and get on the podium. I have a lot of determination, I try hard and I have great coaches to help me train."

Freestyle B.C. team manager Wade Garrod has been monitoring Gaskell's progress and he's convinced there's no limit to her potential as one of Canada's up-and-coming stars.

"She's a bit of a phenomena -- she started skiing in the Bumps and Jumps program when she was like seven years old and did two or three years there and now she skis with the boys and tries to keep up to them. She has a really competitive, mature kind of nature for her age."

Gaskell took a fall in a competition a couple weeks ago at Whistler and suffered a bit of whiplash and was wearing a neck brace last week as a precaution, but showed no ill effects and fearlessly set the bar Saturday with her stylish tricks.

The slopestyle course started with three rail obstacles and ended with three jumps which get progressively larger. In both her final runs, Gaskell's first jump was a switch 180 (a backwards takeoff and half rotation), followed by 360 (full rotation) and 720 (two rotations).

Her 77.7-point score on the first of two final runs pushed her over the top. Rachael Karker of Halton Hills, Ont. (61.7) and Sofiane Gagnon of Whistler (61.2) won silver and bronze.

B.C. dominated the slopestyle event, winning four of six medals to take the early lead in the medal standings. Teal Harle of Whistler, 18, won gold over 28 other male slopestyle skiers with a score of 90.0, Patrick Dew of Vernon claimed silver (82.2) and Lucas Lambert of Horseshoe Valley, Ont., captured bronze (61.2).

Harle also had the top two runs overall. Only the highest score of each competitor is counted in determining the final placings. On his 90-point ride he started with a rodeo 540 (an off-axis back flip with 1 1/2 rotations and a tail-grab on the second rotation), followed by a switch 409 and cork (sideways twisting) 900. Harle competed on the brand-new course at Tabor a year ago at a test event for the Games and said his familiarity with the course helped.

"The score is out of 100 and 90 is one of my best runs for sure, it was really fun," said Harle. "I was just happy to make it the bottom and land all the tricks. I just tried to step it up and make everything cleaner and land everything better and I guess it worked.

"It's awesome to start off the Games with B.C. on gold. I'm really stoked (about the four B.C. medals). I knew we could do it, we just had to pull it off."

Harle was home-schooled and is the first graduate of the Podium of Life program his parents Corey and Shane Harle started at Mt. Washington near Courtenay and brought to Whistler several years ago. Classroom instruction takes place in the lodge at Whistler, allowing students all the time they need to take advantage of the ski slopes. Shane Harle is a teacher at the school and his wife Corey is a physiotherapist.

"I don't know any other school that you do school right in the lodge but it's really fun," said Harle. "We did school in the morning and then go skiing in the afternoon, so what could be better than that."

Harle, also competes at the NorAm and World Cup levels and is now taking aim at making the Canadian squad for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Like Gaskell, Dew is a product of the Silver Star Freestyle Ski Club in Vernon. Trying to eclipse Harle, Dew tried a switch 720 off the first jump of his second run but crashed. His back-to-back cork 900 off-axis jumps in his first final run solidified his silver medal.

"I'm just super-stoked about how we both podiumed together," said Dew. "It's been our dream to podium together all year and I'm glad we made it happen here."

Freestyle skiing resumes Sunday with he big air event at Tabor.