Maybe it was the cold weather that put ice in Brayden Kuroda's veins to keep his nerves in check.
Maybe it was the inspiring news from the Sochi Olympics of Canada's Dufour-Lapointe sisters, Justine and Chloe, winning gold and silver in the moguls event.
Or maybe it was just Kuroda's way of showing his coach and father Kenny that there's something special about the moguls at Tabor Mountain that bring out the best in him, just like they did 40 years ago when Kenny was at the top of his game as a freestyle skier.
Whatever it was, it worked for Brayden Kuroda.
His first run in Saturday's BC Freestyle Timber Tour moguls event Saturday at Tabor led to a career-high 21.47-point score (out of a possible 30) for the just-turned 13-year-old Apex Freestyle Ski Club member from Penticton. His previous best score was the the 17-point range and his turns were mostly what did it for him. Turns account for 50 per cent of a skier's overall mark and Kuroda scored 11 out of a possible 15 points for his turns alone. His jumps -- a 360 off the top and back flip with a Cossack (reaching his hands down with skis by his ears) -- gained him plenty of altitude as well as points.
"I knew I could ski the moguls without falling," said Kuroda, who started skiing at age 2.
"The course was pretty easy to ski, the moguls were spaced far apart so you could just go straight and they weren't big ruts, it was a fast course."
One of the course officials had an iPad on the hill while Kuroda was waiting his turn and he watched the Dufour-Lapointe sisters make their historic podium runs in Sochi. But nothing could take his mind off the fact it was - 25 when his moguls competition started.
"I hated the cold," said Kuroda. "I couldn't really feel my toes in my first run."
Kuroda's score in the best of two runs eclipsed that of the two older age group winners, Ben Pratt of Whistler, who won the M2 (males 16-18-years) class with 21.28 points, and M4 (male 13-and-under) winner Kyle Parker of Apex (21:15). Joining Kuroda on the medal podium was Luke Smart of Mount Washington (20.95) and Chase Ujejski of Whistler (20.95)
The best result among the 12 female moguls entrants belonged to Madison Parker of Apex, who scored 18.92 while winning the F4 (13-and-under class), sharing the medal podium with Mei Xing Pond of Mount Washington (18.92) and Anna Spence of Apex (14.72).
Mack Schwinghamer of Apex was tops among F3 skiers (16.92), while Mason Barzilay of Apex, an 18-year-old B.C. team member, recovered from a fall in her first run and was uncontested in winning the F2 class (16.64).
In other moguls results, Ben Pratt of Whistler laid down a 21.15-point run to win the M2 event and B.C. team member Kyle Parker, Mackenzie's 15-year-old brother, scored 21.15 to capture the M3 class. The 17 Apex skiers at Tabor won nine moguls medals Saturday.
The host Northern BC Freestyle Club entered a handful of skiers in the moguls event. Wyatt Turcotte, 16, was 12th in the M3 category with 5.95 points, while Cody Strickland, 14, was 13th in M3 with 5.88. Devin Rentz, Dominik Zwiers, Keagan Fraser, Loic St. Denis and Andre Dreyer also competed for the Northern B.C. club.
"They did really well," said Prince George coach Ryan Milne. "It was their first time ever on a big moguls course and those jumps can be a little intimidating but every one of them went down and tried them out for the first time with straight jumps and landed them. I'm real proud of the young kids. We're just learning to ski, but if we keep this up maybe some of them have the itch now and will want to keep going."
n Now 58, Kenny Kuroda was one of the pioneers of freestyle skiing in the '70s when he competed in moguls, aerials and ballet against the likes of Greg Athens of Kelowna and Daryl and Rick and Daryl Bowie of Calgary, Brad Suey of Prince George and the original aerial specialists who made up the Canadian freestyle air force. Kuroda competed for several years on the B.C. Pro Freestyle series in Prince George in 1970s and he won money at Tabor. His trip back there on the weekend was the first time at Tabor since 1977.
The World Cup adopted freestyle in 1980 and it was introduced as an demonstration sport for the Calgary Olympics in 1988. The pros were offered the chance to go back to amateur status but Kuroda remained a pro so he could earn money on the demonstration show circuit in Japan.
n Chloe Kober of Apex, 14, the daughter of Olympic men's moguls coach Rob Kober, won bronze in the F3 moguls after finishing second Friday in slopestyle. While driving to Prince George, Rob's wife Tonya, who lived in Prince George for a year when Rob was head coach of the Central Interior Freestyle Ski Club in 1995-96, received a text from her husband in Sochi wishing the team good luck for the Prince George competition.
n Meryeta O'Dine of Prince George, 16, finished sixth and ninth competing in a field of 36 women at a weekend Nor-Am snowcross competiton in Copper Mountain, Colo.
Kober and Olympic men's team members Mikael Kingsbury and Marc-Antoine Gagnon Skyped into Scott Bellavance's Grade 6 class at Southridge elementary school last week for a question-and-answer session before they left for Sochi.
n In training Saturday, Teal Harle of Mt. Washington landed on his back and hit his head hard enough to crack his helmet. He was taken to UHNBC with a suspected concussion.
