Meryeta O'Dine continues to climb the world ranks in snowboardcross as one of Canada's future Olympic team hopefuls.
She returned to North American soil this week and picked up right where she left off.
O'Dine won a NorAm event Wednesday in Sugarloaf, Maine, edging Americans Anna Miller and Colleen Healy in the big final for top spot on the medal podium. That came on the heels of a fourth-place finish Tuesday at Sugarloaf, a race won by Rosina Mancari of Anchorage, Alaska.
For Tuesday's race, she was working on just four hours of sleep after 70 hours of travel from the other side of the planet.
Saturday at a World Cup race in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in a test event on the Bokwang course to be used for the 2018 Olympics, the just-turned 19-year-old from Prince George advanced to the big final and posted a best-ever sixth-place finish.
"The course in Pyeongchang was massive," said O'Dine, in an email to The Citizen.
"I've never seen one so big and riding it for my third World Cup was a little surreal. Mentally I was very unprepared going into the competition from injuring myself in cooper the week before. So heading into it I was very hesitant and a bit afraid of falling again.
"After the first day I though I was going to pull myself from the competition because I was so uncomfortable. But after another day of training and then heading into heats I was calmed and excited for the day. Riding a little more confident. To finish that high was surreal even to be at the event itself, but to do so well was very uplifting."
She posted her previous best World Cup result a year ago in Spain, where she placed 16th. In Pyeongchang, O'Dine won her first heat and was second in the semifinal.
"I made a couple mistakes in my final right out of the start but while coming into the section where I would make my passes, my adrenaline was to the roof," said O'Dine.
"Going for the first pass over the double slightly ahead at the second last berm, I had my tail clipped and was spun and had to stop. The jumps were so big you had to hike up them if you came in with no speed, so I was a ways behind at the finish line but it was a fun race."
O'Dine is on a bit of a roll lately. She won two NorAm races on her home hill at Tabor Mountain, Feb. 4-5, after posting second- and fourth-place results at Tabor the previous weekend. Two weekends ago, she was fifth and seventh at Nor-Am events at Cooper, Colo. She will head back to Europe for a World Cup race in Spain March 19.
In other local NorAm results, Evan Bichon of Prince George finished in a four-way tie for ninth out of 48 who started the race. Bichon, 17, who placed fourth two weeks ago at the Junior Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, nailed down a sixth-place result in Tuesday's NorAm race at Sugarloaf.
Although the Canadian junior national team has yet to be announced, O'Dine and Bichon are considered likely candidates for the world junior snowboardcross championships in Sovenia, April 5-6. They also have the Canadian national championships on their radar, starting March 23 in Quebec.
